Survey shows tremendous progress in women’s health
Invited guests during the launch of the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), Nairobi on January 17, 2023.
A new survey has revealed improvement in health indicators for Kenyans in the past eight years.
The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) 2022 released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), reveals a tremendous progress in women’s health.
Meeting the need for contraception and exceeding her target for the prevalence rate of contraception have both steadily increased.
Between 2014 and 2022, the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) increased from 58 to 63 percent while the percentage of unmet family planning needs during the same time decreased from 18 to 14 percent.
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More progress for women is seen in maternal health with continued universal attainment of prenatal care coverage by a health provider at 98 percent and considerable improvement of 4th ANC attendance to 66 percent in 2022 as opposed to 58 percent of pregnant women in 2014.
Kenya has seen consistent improvement in skilled birth attendance since the removal of user fees for maternity care in June 2013 (the Linda Mama Initiative).
From 41 percent in 2003 to 62 percent in 2014, and a stunning leap to 89 percent in 2022. This has surpassed the Kenya Health Policy goal of 80 percent skilled birth attendance by 2030.
Another gain
The health and survival of children is another gain the country has made in the last eight years. Despite the setbacks brought on by the Covid-19 Pandemic, the country has maintained high performance in terms of childhood immunizations, with eight out of ten children under 24 months being fully immunised in 2022.
For the first time, the KDHS gathered information on early childhood development, which showed that 83 percent of kids between the ages of 24 and 35 months were progressing normally.
There is also gain in continuous decline in childhood stunting, which fell from 26 percent to 18 percent over the course of eight years.
The number of Kenyans who have health insurance also increased from 19 percent in 2018 (KHFA) to 25 percent in 2022 even though it’s below the country’s 80 percent coverage target.
