An international NGO, Family Health International (FHI 360) has launched a project dubbed “healthy parenthood” in Nakuru County to improve access to quality family planning and reproductive health services.
The project manager Dr Peter Mariket said the programme would also address maternal, newborn, child and adolescent services as well as ensure planned and well-timed pregnancies.
Dr. Mariket said service delivery in reproductive health was still a challenge in the country because a lot of money was spent in mitigating unsafe- abortions and pre-term babies, which would easily be reduced through creating healthy parenthood awareness.
He said delayed childbearing for adolescents translated to healthy parenthood or ‘AfyaUzazi’ and to achieve that, they would partner with existing projects and resources from consortium partners as a platform to scale up innovative, evidence-based practices to improve and expand the delivery of health services.
He said the five-year project would be funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and a similar project would also be launched in Baringo County. He was speaking Monday during an interview with KNA in their offices.
FHI 360 is a non-profit international humanitarian development organization with a presence in 60 countries and headquartered in the USA.
Nakuru County has a high prevalence of adolescent pregnancies which currently stands at 18 per cent and there are a lot of back-street procured abortions, which lead to health complications and long hospitalization for victims.
According to the Adolescent Sexual Health Reproductive Survey of 2014, half of the county’s male and female aged 20 to 49 first had sex by age 17 and 19, respectively. However, half of the women got married by age 21 and those are the people targeted by FHI on save parenthood and spacing of children.
By Veronica Bosibori
Healthy Parenthood
