Pandemic: Kenyan women didn’t want more children

Woman reading leaflet before taking contraceptive pills. [Courtesy]

The Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 provided couples with more free time than they were accustomed to. This presented new challenges in the reproductive health department as many couples had more time for sex but few women wanted to get pregnant during the pandemic.

According to a survey released by Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA), a health consortium in Africa and Asia, only one in ten women wanted more children in 2020.  This explains why the use of modern methods of contraceptives increased from 56 to 61 per cent in 2020 while unintended pregnancy rates declined from 42 to 37 percent.