Arrest men behind teen pregnancies

Students in class. [Courtesy]

‘More labor pain cases on exam day’, that was a headline in The Standard on March 23, 2021. The story was about teenage girls-turned mothers who joined some 1.2 million candidates for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education examinations this week. Labour wards, the story explained, had become alternatives for exam rooms.

Sadly, these new young mothers are among an estimated 152,000 girls who fell pregnant last year, a predicament partly blamed on lockdown, closure of schools, and lack of access to sexual reproductive health services. There was a 40 percent increase in the monthly average of teenage pregnancies during the period.