741 school-going girls in Narok are pregnant – report

By , K24 Digital
On Mon, 24 Oct, 2022 10:06 | 2 mins read
Administrator
Photo used for illustration only. PHOTO/courtesy

The Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health in Narok County have released fresh figures on the number of teen pregnancies leading to high dropouts in schools.

The figures show that 741 school-going girls in the county are pregnant, according to data from the Ministry of Education forcing stakeholders to employ new strategies to end the vice.

However, the numbers from the Ministry of Education are lower than those of the health ministry which put the figure at 900 teenagers.

The ministry obtained their data from teenagers seeking antenatal services in different hospitals in the county every month.

Jane Njogu, the County Director of Education, told a stakeholder meeting at the county commissioner's office on Friday, October 21 that 332 teenage girls in primary schools are pregnant while another 409 students below the age of 18 years are pregnant in secondary schools.

Majority of them are national examination candidates in both levels of education.

“Narok South is leading in girls’ pregnancy with 149 girls, followed by Narok Central at 140 while Narok West sub-county has 124 pregnant learners. Other sub-counties where such incidences have happened include Trans Mara West, 81, Narok North, 60, Narok East, 66, Trans Mara South, 67, and Trans Mara East sub-county with 54 pregnancy cases,” Njogu said.

Girls drop out of school

But according to figures released by Narok County Health Director Francis Kiio, approximately 900 girls have visited various health facilities in the county for their first antenatal clinic every month translating to 10,800 teenagers getting pregnant every year in Narok.

“This means there are 900 new cases of teen pregnancy among people aged below 18 years every month. Some of these girls are still in school while others have dropped out of school,” he said.

On Friday, Narok county security committee called a stakeholders' meeting and the top on the agenda is a one-month Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) drive to arrest and prosecute sex pests in the county.

The decision was reached during a consultative meeting presided over by Narok County Commissioner Isaac Masinde and attended by eight deputy county commissioners, the County Director of Education, and the County Director of Gender.

Senior counsel from the Office of Public Prosecution, the County Police Commander, representatives from the Judiciary, the County Director of Health, and the County Children Officer, were also in attendance.

In the meeting, Njogu blamed the vice on societal moral decadence that he said it allows girls to engage in sex after they undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Apart from the native community cultural practices, Njogu further blamed some school heads for not willing to disclose the number of pregnant girls in their schools and instead collaborated with the parents not to reveal the men responsible for the pregnancies.

“Some rogue parents are working in cahoots with the school heads not to reveal their pregnant teen girls, and to get perpetrators of these atrocious acts is proving to be difficult,” Njogu said.

However, Masinde directed the education department to champion the creation of guidance and counseling sessions in all schools where the students will be taken through thorough sensitization programmes.

So far, 66 people have been remanded while 90 other people have been convicted by the courts for defilement in the county in the past nine months.

In the year 2014, Narok County was captured in the Kenya Health Demographic Survey as the leading county with teenage pregnancy cases at 40 per cent against the national average of 18 per cent.

Related Topics