Help women plan for pregnancy to reduce deaths

Approximately 360,000 babies will be born in the world today. This translates to 15,000 babies per hour. Some of those babies will be delivered by women in Kenya, who now have an average of four children per woman, down from nine children per woman in 1979.

The median space between one child and the next is at 36.3 months, against a recommended 24 to 36 months wait before attempting to get pregnant again, in order to prevent infant deaths.

Child spacing means that a woman has the number of children she wants, when she wants, rather than out of chance.

Research shows that having well-spaced children means reduced complications in childbirth, increased chances of survival for both mother and baby, better health as the woman’s body has time to recover from pregnancy, and a generally happy family.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTRACEPTIVES

Contraception – both traditional and modern – is an important factor in planning for pregnancy and in child spacing. Planned pregnancies lower the risk of potentially serious issues such as low birth weight, preterm birth and small-for-gestational age. They also prevent an unanticipated worsening of health for women with pre-existing health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. And of course, contraception reduces unintended pregnancy.

Other benefits of family planning include giving women a chance to pursue, grow and undertake successful careers. Also, parents have less fatigue, and children get more attention. On the marriage front, stronger family bonds are built due to increased family time ,not to mention that one is able to recover from child rearing at each stage.

One can also better plan their finances by forecasting expenses that come with having additional family members, and children react better to new siblings due to the age gap.

Traditionally, herbs, roots, oils, improvised barrier methods, myths and extended breastfeeding were used as contraceptives.

Some of those methods may have led to permanent infertility or grave sexual and reproductive health complications but, they are a basis for today’s scientific strides to ensure women have access to safe and affordable contraception.
Some of these methods continue to be used in parts of Africa and present an opportunity for engaging governments and communities to embrace child spacing and family planning.

Research shows that globally 56 per cent of women use modern contraceptives such as pills, condoms, and injectable contraceptives, among others.

In Kenya 18 per cent of married women have an unmet need for contraceptives, that is, they would like to use contraceptives but do not have access. Another worrying statistic is that 23 per cent of adolescents have an unmet need. When women cannot plan for pregnancy, the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions continue to rise. Although science is making inroads in innovating solutions, policy and people engagement is yet to yield the desired results.

Our hope going forward may lie in our ability to recollect the traditions of eons past, and the creativity and ingenuity of our forefathers to innovate and solve everyday constraints. This coupled with the systematic way of science will lead to the creation of a fusion of applicable solutions to our health and environmental challenges.

Our traditional stands must bend to meet science. We must act to end child and maternal deaths, by acknowledging that it is the right of every woman regardless of age to decide if and when to have children.

The world is marking World Contraception Day today, and if this year’s theme “It’s your life, it’s your choice, know your options” is to make sense at all, we need to be cognisant of the fact that for a woman to make the best decision about the birth control that is right for her, information needs to be readily available and contraceptives need to be readily accessible.

Mr Collin Dick is the Managing Director of DKT Healthcare International, Kenya and Uganda, which aims to improve access to reproductive health services