Kwale has recorded a sharp drop in teen pregnancies, with only 2,821 cases reported this year.
According to data from the county Health Department and Fanikisha Foundation, the cases have plummeted by 70 per cent compared to the previous records of 2016 up to mid-2019 when more than 8,000 cases were recorded.
By the end of last December, about 5,400 cases were reported but the curve continued to flatten, despite the surge in sexual and gender-based violence stirred by the Covid-19 crisis.
On Thursday, Christine Mvurya, Governor Salim Mvurya's wife, attributed the decline to political goodwill, campaigns and health advocacy programmes spearheaded by the county government.
She said the drop is a sign that the county is winning the war against the vice. “If we go back to our records, it is evident that our efforts to compress the draft are bearing fruit,” she said in an interview in Diani.
According to the United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA) 2019 data, Tana River, Kwale and Kilifi had the highest prevalence of teenage pregnancies at the Coast, with Kwale standing at 24 per cent higher than the national average of 18 per cent.
In 2017, the county departments of Education, Health, and Youth and Gender formulated an action plan to effectively increase access to family planning information and services to prevent teenage pregnancies.
Christine said it has been a long challenging journey and cautioned against complacency.
Last November, county nursing officer Edward Mumbo reported a slight decline of teen pregnancies in some areas and an increase in others. In Kinango, which was leading in early pregnancies and young mums, cases went down, while in Matuga and Lunga-Lunga, the numbers surged.
Christine, who is also the Kwale CEO for Fanikisha Foundation, said the county made the campaigns a success through partners like Plan International, Base Titanium, Women Fighting Aids in Kenya that provided funds.
Christine established the foundation in 2015 to empower women through good menstrual hygiene and healthy reproduction and reduction of poverty at the grassroots.
She urged parents to budget for adolescent girls and take them through safe menstrual cycles by providing sanitary towels, among other requirements. She said a lack of fulfilment of some basic needs contributes a lot to teen pregnancies.
“We have to make sure girls well catered for because if we partially attend to their problems, they will find alternatives to address them and that’s where things get worse,” Christine said.
