Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha while speaking on the sidelines of the African Union Summit 2023 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia stated that she will not give condoms to underage Kenyans.
The CS noted that as a Christian woman, she vouches for abstinence as a precautionary measure against STDs and pregnancies among teenagers.
“I am Mama Kanisa (a church woman); therefore, number one is abstinence; that we teach our youth, our adolescents to abstain,” the health CS said.
Moreover, while noting that condoms have been used across the world, CS Nakhumicha said that Kenyan teenagers should be able to abstain with what she called “firm Christian foundations”.
“Where they cannot abstain, then of course, condoms have been said as one of the ways to use protection. But I believe with firm Christian foundations that our adolescents should be able to abstain,” Nakhumicha said.
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Nonetheless, Nakhumicha’s sentiments come a week after the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) executive director Winnie Byanyima advised Kenya to allow teenagers to access contraceptives.
According to Byanyima, societal inequalities and injustices are increasing the HIV/AIDS pandemic and making a section of people, includin young women and adolescent girls, highly vulnerable to HIV infection.
“Increasing access isn’t just about putting clinics and making available contraceptives, it’s more than that, it’s about safe spaces where girls and young women can feel safe, have the privacy that they need and have the choice of the method they want so as to protect themselves from infections, HIV, and sexually transmitted infections (STI’s). This is not happening for every girl and every woman,” she said.
