By WILBERFORCE NETYA
West Pokot, Kenya: The African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) has launched a three-year maternal health support programme for women in the reproductive stage in West Pokot County.
The project dubbed Stay Alive, will also be implemented in Uganda and Malawi with funding from the Dutch government.
The programme seeks to attain the millennium development Goal Five by reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent by 2015.
Speaking during the launch in Kapenguria at the weekend, AMREF Country Director Dr Lennie Bazira Kyomuhangi said the project targets 113,000 women of reproductive age in the county as direct beneficiaries.
She said the project, undertaken in collaboration with the Kenyan government through the Health ministry, will cost Sh160 million (Euros 150,000) funded by the Dutch government through AMREF in the Netherlands.
Dr Kyomuhangi said that maternal and child health indicators in the country, and more so West Pokot, were worrying with the 2009 Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS) data showing only 18.1 per cent of women in the county delivered from health facilities.
She said the same data indicated only 9.5 per cent of women in the region use modern contraceptives, with maternal mortality standing at 488 per 100,000 births.
