857 girls aged between 10 and 19 years impregnated in Nyandarua – report

 

857 girls aged between 10 and 19 years were impregnated in Nyandarua between January and June this year, a report by  the National council for population distribution has revealed.

The council attributes the teenage pregnancies to among other factors, poverty, social media ,prolonged closure of schools and poor parenting.

The council also cites the lack of reproductive health knowledge as a key contributor of the worrying trend.

In mitigation measures, the council now wants:

-Parents to receive messages on how to guide their teenage children

-Teenagers to be guided on how to use social media

-Conveyance of reproductive health messages to the community and especially adolescents.

School closure have cut off girls from teachers who can sound the alarm in suspected cases of abuse at home.

Students have also been left idle and often unchaperoned by busy parents while the mandatory curfews have trapped girls in homes with predatory family members and neighbours.

President Uhuru Kenyatta recently warned that culprits found culpable would face the full wrath of the law

He  directed National Crime Research Centre (NCRC) to probe the vices and report on the same by the end of July.

The agency is expected to also start the prosecution of the offenders amid reports that 38 counties in Kenya had reported sexual and gender-based violence incidents since the onset of the pandemic.