Nairobi and the Central region have the highest rate of induced abortions in the country.
A report released on Friday by the Africa Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) shows the regions recorded 234,125 induced abortions in 2023.
This is followed by Nyanza and Western region with 222,196 induced abortions in 2023.
Rift Valley region had 153,314 cases, 108,910 in the Eastern region and 74,150 cases in Coast and North Eastern region.
Nationality, it is estimated that there was a total of 792,694 induced abortions in Kenya in 2023.
"While only one in four women in Central/Nairobi (25.9 per cent) received any care at a formal health facility during their most recent abortion, this proportion increases to over 40 per cent in the Coast/North Eastern (42.3 per cent) and Eastern (43 per cent)," the report says.
The study was conducted jointly with the Guttmacher Institute and the Ministry of Health between April 2023 and May 2024 through three study components.
The first component was the Health Facilities Survey (HFS), which entailed a survey of both public and private health facilities that provide post abortion care (PAC).
A total of 694 health facilities were sampled, of which 648 participated in the survey.
The second component involved surveying more than 2,000 women aged between 15 and 49 years who had an induced abortion in the past five years.
The third component involved interviewing women who presented to formal health facilities with abortion related complications over a 30-day observation period, as well as collecting clinical data on the severity of their complications from their providers and medical records.
The study aimed to estimate the incidence of induced abortions, the severity of post-abortion complications, assess health facility capacity to provide PAC and assess the lived experiences of women who have had abortions.
"Induced abortions are mainly driven by unwanted pregnancies, so we have to address the problem of unintended pregnancies; the higher the number of unintended pregnancies, the higher the induced abortions," Kenneth Juma, a senior researcher at APHRC, said during the national dissertation forum.
According to the report, there were an estimated 2,850,346 pregnancies in Kenya in 2023, of which 1,435,988 were unintended and 792,694 ended in induced abortion
