• Most of the affected girls are those in day secondary and primary schools and are impregnated by their fellow students.
• She said lack of access to reproductive health information has escalated the cases.
Image: LINAH MUSANGI
Kakamega county records 12,900 teenage pregnancies on average yearly, the county reproduction health office has revealed.
Most of the affected girls are in day secondary and primary schools and are impregnated by their fellow students. They are aged between 10 and 19 years.
The county recorded 7,639 teenage pregnancies in 2017, 16,559 in 2018, 16,957 in 2019, 14,374 in 2020 and 6,616 between January and June this year, according to the county reproduction health office.
The county recorded 1,096 pregnancies of girls aged between 10 and 14 years in 2017, 410 in 2018, 532 in 2019, 394 in 2020 and 237 between January and June.
The most affected subcounties are Butere, which accounts for 48.1 per cent, followed by Mumias West at 43.7 per cent and Mumias East at 39.5 per cent.
The others are Shinyalu at 38.4 per cent and Navakholo at 35 per cent. The rest are below 30 per cent.
According to the office, most of the teenagers were impregnated by their male colleagues due to the long distances they cover to and from schools.
"We used to think that boda boda operators were predators, but when the girls came to health facilities to deliver, they revealed that the fathers to their children are fellow students,” county reproductive health coordinator Imelda Barasa said.
She said lack of access to reproductive health information has escalated the cases.
Some of the interventions undertaken in 2020 to contain the situation included the introduction of a toll-free number where teenagers could call and access information on reproductive health.
The service is however restricted to urban areas where young people can access information faster than their rural folks.
Other interventions included intensified outreach services, platforms with information on reproductive health, parental dialogue and training on how to address their children on sexual matters.
Afya Halisi organisation supports some of the interventions.
The county government also used youth champions, in which young mothers talk to teenagers about the importance of abstaining from sex, access to family planning services and consequences of teenage pregnancies.
Barasa said that during the Covid-19 pandemic period, teenagers feared visiting health facilities for reproductive health services on belief that they would contract the virus.
Woman Representative Elsie Muhanda has been encouraging and supporting schoolgirls who get impregnated to return to school after delivering.
Her office has since 2018 given full sponsorship to 120 teenage girls who became pregnant while in school and dropped out, so they can resume their education.
In 2020, the office did not sponsor any girl due to the push to amend the Constitution through the BBI that proposed scrapping the position of the woman rep.
“We thought the position may be scrapped and that would make it difficult to sustain the programme because we are using funds from the National Government Affirmative Action Fund, which is attached to the office of the woman rep,” Muhanda said.
Edited by A.N