Kenya’s ministry of health recently revealed the high rise in number of women having abortion in the country, despite more liberal abortion laws, CEOAFRICA.com gathered.

The report puts the number of women that had abortion last year at 465,000, with vast majority unsafe.

Presently, Kenya’s national abortion rate of 48 abortion for every 1,000 women is the highest in Africa.

However, due to the fact that most of these abortion takes place in unsafe conditions, not less than 120,000 women sought for medical treatment resulting from complications from abortions.

Reacting to the report, a medical practitioner with the African Population and Health Research Centre, Dr. Elizabeth Kimani said despite the safety concerns, there’s still a resistance in Kenya to address the problem.

“I think there is still a lot of stigma about reproductive health and about abortion. Because of continued resistance to abortion, the country has not brought health care facilities up speed and since it was quite restricted before 2010, there are no good structures which have yet been established even after the promulgation, in terms of training health care professionals, in terms of safe abortion care," she said.

Before 2010, three doctors had to sign off on the procedure when it was necessary to save the life of the mother through abortion, but after then, health professionals were given more leeway by the constitution to determine when abortion is permitted.

Women use traditional herbs, or high doses of anti-malaria medication to terminate pregnancies. They also insert objects like knitting needles into their bodies.

Kimani then suggested that Kenya should devote more resources into family planning as a way of getting over this situation.
“Because people have unintended pregnancies first, and then they seek abortions. So we actually have to deal with this issue first.” Kimani said.

Research states that 43 percent of pregnancies in Kenya are unintended. The report concludes that increasing access to contraceptives and other reproductive health services is key to preventing unsafe abortions.