The government, which controls slightly over half of all health facilities in the country, has failed on several occasions to take responsibility for the reproductive health of its citizens. This leads to severe human rights violations in health facilities and cases of mothers and newborn babies losing their lives.
According to a joint report by the Center for Reproductive Rights and FIDA Kenya, various factors account for this including: understaffing; the imposition of user fees; congestion; lack of most basic supplies such as anesthesia, gloves, syringes, surgical blades, soap, disinfectant, speculums and bed linens; negligence; and malpractice, which includes unreasonably painful and poorly performed stitching sometimes without anesthesia. Evidence for this can be seen in the choices of 56% of Kenyan women in the slums and the rural areas to deliver in their homes instead of at health facilities. It is not surprising then that Kenya has a high maternal death rate: 488 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (according to the latest 2008/9 KDHS report).
A recent report by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (the countdown to 2015) revealed that at least 21 mothers, sometimes the sole breadwinners of their families, die daily from childbirth-related complications in Kenya, from delivery due to poor hygiene (that is responsible for about 22 % of deaths), from bleeding (estimated to be the cause of 30% of maternal deaths), while high blood pressure, malaria and HIV/AIDS contribute to the remaining percentage of maternal deaths.
Interestingly, the condom shortage reported in parts of the country last year went unheeded until it developed into a countrywide crisis this year. Some of the negative outcomes that may arise as a result of the shortage include reversals in gains made in the war against HIV/AIDS and an increase in unwanted pregnancies which expose poor and young mothers-to-be to unsafe abortions and unsafe deliveries.
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