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FACTBOX: The state of reproductive rights in Kenya

by Katy Migiro | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 1 April 2011 01:08 GMT

In Kenya, 21,000 women are hospitalized annually due to unsafe abortions

 

* Nearly 20 percent of births in Kenya are unwanted and another 25 percent are mistimed, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2003.

 

*Although government-provided contraceptives are supposed to be free, user fees are charged in 51 percent of family planning facilities, an insurmountable barrier to many poor women.

 

* 38 percent of Kenyan girls begin childbearing by the age of 18.

 

* 13,000 schoolgirls drop out of school each year due to pregnancy.

 

*44 percent of Kenyan women give birth with skilled medical care.

 

* Kenyan women have a 1-in-25 lifetime risk of dying from a pregnancy-related cause.

 

*36 percent of medical facilities have the basic supplies for a normal delivery – scissors or a blade, umbilical cord ties, a suction apparatus, antibiotic eye ointment for the infant and disinfectant, according to the 2004 Kenya Service Provision Assessment Survey.

 

*21,000 Kenyan women are hospitalized due to unsafe abortions each year, both spontaneous and induced. Many others are too scared or too poor to seek help.

 

* Unsafe abortion causes 30 to 40 percent of maternal deaths in Kenya, according to the Kenya Medical Association and Kenya Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society.

 

 See the Center for Reproductive Rights' slideshow "Dying for Change" about the consequences of Kenya's restrictive abortion laws here.

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