Saving Kenya's Environment Through Family Planning

Adana visited the camel mobile clinic and chose again for re-insertion, the five-year (jadelle) contraceptive method. Much like the first time she received the contraceptive implant, Adana came to CHAT in secret, as her husband does not want any of his wives to avail themselves of contraception. She is her husband’s fourth wife and has four children – a number which might be regarded as high in the 1st world, but pales in comparison to the round dozen that the first wife has delivered (wives number two and three have ten and eight children, respectively.) With such a comparatively low number of births, Adana husband believes there is something wrong with her.

His criticisms of her apparent lack of ability to conceive drove her last year to fake both a pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage to try to cover up the fact that she is using family planning. After this supposed miscarriage, her husband took her to the local witch doctor for treatment, who pronounced that Adana had been cursed and ordered her to slaughter a black goat to lift said curse. The witch doctor insisted the goat be entirely black, as the person who had cursed Adana surely was, too.

To this day, Adana’s husband doesn’t know she is using contraception and she is afraid to tell him. Men in this area of northern Kenya are very resistant to family planning and insist that contraception leads to permanent infertility and promiscuity. Efforts by CHAT to try to educate the men in this area have been soundly rebuffed by male members of the community. Resultingly, CHAT has been forced to work with women in the community in relative secret, using basic curative care as an entry point to provide women with contraception. The upside is that people are receiving care they desperately need – there is no hospital in the area. The downside, of course, is the need for secrecy and continuing misconceptions about family planning running rampant through the community. Our FPCORPs continue to work hard to challenge misconceptions in this region. It must be said that there are very few communities that will not now accept the concept of family planning – and these very few members will usually be male members.

Presently CHAT is only able to afford to reach Adana’s hard to reach community once or twice a year via camel.

Most poor and under-served Kenyans are generally desperate for family planning services but in many cases are unable to access it – and although the GoK has said services should be free – many desperately poor people trying to access FP discover health workers will add a cost!

In the past quarter, CHAT reached out to 6 counties that included Laikipia, Samburu, Isiolo, Baringo, Meru and Nakuru. A total of 29,850 individuals were reached with CHAT’s innovative holistic family planning intervention that encompasses a strong component of ecological sensitization, basic health care, HIV/AIDS counselling and testing and TB services, of which 11,847 accessed free FP/ecological awareness services ( 8,047 chose the longer term methods, 2,717 Depo-Provera-3 months protection & 1,083 pills). 991 were treated for various conditions & 1,237 clients were counseled and tested for HIV/AIDS and received their results.