Lower your birth rate, Kenyan families urged

• Five children per woman is too much for the country to bear, they advise

Projections ahead of the just concluded census indicated that the country’s population had hit the 40 million mark, an increase of 10 million since the last count a decade ago.

Initially the original UN projections assumed that through a successful family planning programme, the reduction in the number of children born to Kenyan women would decline from an average of three births per woman by 2015 and two births per woman by 2050.

Family health and development experts say unchecked population growth is taking a heavy toll on the country’s ability to feed its people and provide basic social services like education and health care.

The experts further warn that the population boom is likely to hurt Kenya’s efforts to achieve a middle-income economy in the next 21 years, as spelt out in the Vision 2030 development plan.

“We are seeing the effects of limited resources among a large population. We rarely have enough food or enough water. If the growth is not checked, we may find ourselves in continuous crisis in the years to come,” said Tiberius Barasa of the governance and development programme at the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR).

Vision 2030

“Development plans are made in relation to a country’s population growth. For us to achieve the goals set by the government in policies such as Vision 2030, population control must be taken into account.”

The current situation has led to Kenya’s losing its once praised population control programme in less than a decade. Currently, population growth in Kenya is higher than in other East African countries; Kenya is also one of the few countries to have recorded rapid population growth in the recent past.

But a resumption in donor funding may see the Kenya government and the private sector embark on another round of vigorous family planning campaigns similar to those held in the 1980s.

Previously, family health experts say, most of the funding came from the US government. However, during President George W. Bush’s eight-year administration, funding was shifted from family health initiatives, notably family planning, to other areas that were deemed more urgent.

“Many donors stopped funding family health initiatives. From the late 1990s to recently, HIV/Aids and malaria were regarded as the biggest threats to nations. Therefore a majority of funds were channelled to projects dealing with either of the two diseases,” said Mr Odhiambo.

Mr Muraguri Muchira, programme director at Family Health Options Kenya, said this resulted in not only in the closure of a number of family health establishments but also in professionals abandoning the family health sector.

“This also reduced the levels of national and international expertise available and took well-trained health personnel and support systems away from reproductive health to work elsewhere,” he said.

The near collapse of the sector, he said, may have resulted in yet another problem for the ministry of Public Health.

“Family planning clinics closed down, resulting in an unmet supply in the demand for family planning products. People started importing all kinds of contraceptives, some chemical-based, others of a herbal nature,” he said. “As a result, there was the emergence of quacks who filled in to meet this demand.”