Reduce Suffering in Kenya Via Health Care Services

*Not their real names

“With the state of tension due to the COVID 19 pandemic - people who do not know or understand what will happen to us.? There is insecurity in our area, we always are ready to move and if you have many children and you have to run for your safety, you might lose them I always encourage my community members to have the number of children that they can manage. It’s just endless problems for us.”  Eturen, CHAT Community Own Resource Person (CORP) partner explained. “We are now also experiencing locust invasion  - and being a community that highly depend on livestock, I do not know what will happen to us once our animals start dying due to hunger!” He continued.

“Ekwam* and his wife Ekarun* decided to go for the five-year implant after I sensitized them on family planning integrating a strong component ecological awareness. It is now a year since they started using the method and every time I pass by their manyatta they seem happier. They have experienced their first year ever in their marriage without pregnancy – this is proving a sense of enormous relief to them. They haven’t had the pressure of an ever-expanding family. I am happy that I was able to help.” He continued.

“We are poor. My husband does not have a job and neither do I. We solely depend on our livestock and with how things have been here at Marti, in northern Samburu I did not think I would survive for long. We always ate the same food, we never bought clothes for our children. They always were in tatters. We just were in bad shape.” Ekarun narrated. “I had never realized that our problem is our family size until Eturen explained it to us. I learn that since I have many mouths to feed, I had to struggle hard to provide for them and the more I added the children the higher the chances that I would not succeed. I have 8 children and that meant that if I added more we would not survive. I am happy that my husband understood the importance of using modern family planning contraception. We are adjusting. I hope we will end up being an example to the rest of the community once we are better off. I know we will be.” Ekarun finished.

In the past three months, through your support CHAT was able to reach a total of 2,481 individuals with behavior change communication (bcc) information with 1,089 clients receiving different FP methods of their choice of which 911 chose the long-term implant methods giving 3 – 5 years protection.  15,211 condoms were distributed.

"One of the major causes of poverty is a lack of family planning. Governments and nonprofit organizations need to encourage poor people to use birth control so that they don't have unexpected babies, which will only make poorer families poorer."

Philip Kotler