Teen pregnancies could rise with pandemic

The past three months have been such a trying moment globally and more so for Kenya.

With many losing their jobs and the economy almost coming to a standstill, things aren’t good at all. Unfortunately, our usual problems are still with us, as they did not take a break to allow us to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

If anything, some will be made worse by this pandemic. And one such disaster is teenage pregnancy.

TEENAGE PREGNANCIES

In 2019, a report released by the National Council on Population and Development showed that we had 379,373 teenage pregnancies.

Counties like Narok had 40 per cent all their teenage girls pregnant. These are children, many of who do not go back to school.
The situation is bound to get worse this year, with schools having been closed for a longer period of time.
The leading causes of teenage pregnancy are poverty, rape or defilement, early marriages and the lack of youth-friendly health facilities.
Loss of jobs and a weak economy means the poor become even poorer and many households will be unable to feed themselves. The situation is bound to make teenage girls more likely to be taken advantage of during this season.

LOCKDOWN

With the lockdown and cessation of movement, organisations that would have taken things like sanitary pads to girls in rural areas are locked up in the capital city, probably with no funds, increasing the vulnerability of these girls.
And as the government unveils stimulus packages to cushion the economy, some of these social problems cannot be ignored.

As it is already, we have a problem with alleviating poverty for the 36.1 per cent of Kenyans said to be living under the poverty line. So, how much more if the numbers keep rising?
Besides increased poverty and reduced education, this is also a call to action for the judicial system.
Rape cases crawl through the judicial system. This sometimes discourages people from pursuing justice when their girls are defiled.
During this period when schools have been closed for months on end, law enforcers should be on the look out for such crimes.

As the police prowl the streets enforcing the curfew and arresting those found without masks, they should also be vigilant for rape and early marriages.

CONTRACEPTIVES

And if this means ensuring that our health facilities don’t turn away teenagers looking for contraceptives, then that’s exactly what our country should do.

Social services for children should also continue being funded. If anything, they should be declared essential services too.
Even as people worry about when things will go back to normal, as a society we should be working towards ensuring that the new normal will not be worse than what we had before the pandemic.

And the probability of hundreds of thousands of teenage girls getting pregnant should jolt us into action.

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