Reduce Suffering in Kenya Via Health Care Services

*not real name.

With her two babies being just a year apart Thirende* has little time on her hands to do anything other than to nurse them. Coming from the productive lands of Kionyo in Meru, her family’s main economic activity is farming. Since she does not work (she has put the family’s farm work behind her) her role has been taken up by the other members of the family.

“There is always a baby in this compound and now it’s my turn to have children especially since I am the youngest and newest wife to be married in to this homestead. In this area you find that the old men share their farm amongst their sons thus they all live in close vicinity. And for the most part the women work in the farms and contribute to their upkeep. It is stressing for me since I am unable to contribute to the work like the other women, and now I am being ridiculed and portrayed as lazy by my husband who often punishes me for this.”

“ If only I could have a break from having more children and have my babies grow up quickly so that I can be strong again and go back to working like the others”.  These were the thoughts Thirende had as she went for the baby’s clinic; and this is where she met Mercy who is a community own resource person partnering with CHAT to provide family planning services using a population health & environment (PHE) approach.

Thirende shared her thoughts with Mercy who told her there is no need to worry since there is always a solution to it all. Mercy told her of the different contraception methods and helped her wipe out all the myths she had heard from other people. Mercy thought it was a good idea to accompany her to tell the other ladies married in her homestead so that they could support each other as they presented the idea to their husbands, after all they are all brothers.

“We are just women trying to earn a honest living for our families as well as to please our in-laws who expect grandchildren from us as well.” Explained Thirende “If every woman in this area was on FP and had the control of when she was going to get pregnant it would help a lot since more of us will be able to work and help in generating some revenue for our families! We need to develop survival techniques in these tough times!”

Thirende agreed with Mercy who had taught her about the benefits of spacing the birth of her children and sensibly planning the numbers of babies to have – this would then promote the health of Thirende which in turn made for a productive individual.

‘The "environmental movement" is becoming an economic movement, is joining the social justice movement, is becoming a sustainability movement. It's leaving behind the "People's Needs” versus “Nature's Needs" conflict in favor of making the case for environmental health as the essential underpinning of prosperous and stable human civilization.’ Edward Norton

In the past three months, through your support CHAT was able to reach a total of 3,781 individuals with behavior change communication (bcc) information with 1,507 clients receiving different FP methods of which 1020 chose the long-term methods providing 3- or 5-years protection.

*not real name

“I was going door to door sensitizing the people and that is how I met Mama Louwai*. She was seated outside the manyatta with two of her daughters, one had an infant suckling and the other daughter was as heavily pregnant as her mother. This was just a weird situation but not uncommon. The family home had so many children running around and though it was all fun and games, it just did not seem right.” CHAT’s CORP partner, Kinoti, shared.

‘Mama Louwai* had six daughters and all of them - except for one - had one or more children. They all lived together. She wished that they were a less number but since they were all there, there was nothing she could do about it. I was curious to know if they went to the facility to at least take their children for immunization or, at least, if they ‘delivered’ at the hospital and to my dismay, she actually laughed at me! She said she did not see the need of going to the hospital for whatever reason whatsoever, especially birth, since it was not an illness!

From this response I knew I had a huge task ahead of me to handle. Luckily, she had shared that she wished there were less children in the homestead. I used this to explain to her that if she wanted the children to always be healthy and for them to control the number of children that they had in their home, she had to visit the hospital to learn more as well as get services that would help them. I told her of the importance of delivering at the health facility since it meant that they will have their children immunized and then will have access to contraception when the right time comes.

She wanted to know if the contraception was going to ruin her body and make them infertile. She also thought that the health facility was a bit too far for them to be going for their antenatal visits. I explained to her that we could arrange that when I return for backpacking - with a nurse next time- that we could always pass by and offer the needed family planning (fp) services to them at home. As for hospital deliveries, she would have to be moving somewhere close to the hospital when she is almost due.

With that, the following week I went with a nurse and four of the ladies chose to take contraception, offer ANC to Mama Louwai and her pregnant daughter and immunize all the children since none of the children had ever been immunized

I am so happy when I see her family progressing on well. The children are healthier and the girls are no longer worried about unwanted pregnancies. This is the kind of work that makes me happy all the time”.

In the past three months, with support from our GG donors  - cost shared with others, we have been able to reach 34,192 individuals (both men and women) with Behavior change information about FP using  a Population Health & Environment (PHE)  approach,  and 8,511 clients chose and were provided with different methods of contraception.

‘By improving health, empowering women population growth comes down’ Bill Gates