The National Council for Population and Development (NCPD) plans to develop a national teenage pregnancy strategy to address the rising numbers of adolescent girls getting pregnant across the country.
NCPD Director General Dr Mohammed Sheikh says there exist no strategy and the government is keen to put one in place in the wake of soaring numbers of young girls getting pregnant.
Sheikh says the strategy will help the government to come up with action plans to address the high teenage pregnancy rates.
The strategy once developed will commit to leverage on resources to address policy barriers and enhance efficiency in providing contraceptive information and services to young people.
“We have never developed a national teenage pregnancy strategy, we have other policies but we want a one national teenage pregnancy strategy,” he said.
Sheikh announced that there is a planned national dialogue in the country on issues torching on teen pregnancies later in the year.
“In the course of this year or next year, we want to see if we can have a national dialogue, we want a forum where we can present all the evidence we gathered from the counties,” he added.
Speaking in Kisumu during the launch of the county working group on teenage pregnancy, Sheikh says the country continues to record startling figures annually on teen pregnancy.
He says annually, the country records 1.6 million deliveries out of which about 400,000 to 200,000 are deliveries of mothers below the age of 18.
“This is the most productive age where that girl was supposed to be producing for this country, not producing children,” he said.
Sheikh says teenage pregnancy involves socio economic and health issues among young girls.
“The maternal mortality in the country are issues related to early pregnancy, because they are not mature enough to carry pregnancy, that is why they die as a result of complications,” he said.
He announced that NCPD will ensure that all the 47 counties have a working group to guide in dealing with teen pregnancies.
Sheikh says there will be a scorecard for the counties to compare interventions employed by each county and the results achieved.
By LTN Reporter
