Revealed: The most popular contraceptives among Kenyan women
Permanent family planning methods, including sterilisation and tubal ligation, recorded low uptake in Kenya.
Depo-Provera injections remained the preferred birth-control method among women in Kenya last year, with 595,703 new users registered, the newly published Economic Survey 2022 shows. Depo-Provera is a contraceptive injection that contains the hormone progestin. The injection is given every three months.
The number of new users of birth-control shots in 2021, however, marks a drop from 616,529 the previous year.
Implants had the second-highest number of new clients at 576,000 while oral pills had the second-highest number of revisits at 475,000 during the period.
Permanent family planning methods, including sterilisation and tubal ligation, recorded low uptake, with the number of women undergoing the procedures decreasing to 3,616 from 4,435 in the previous year. However, male vasectomy recorded 248 new clients.
Kenya has made notable strides to improve the uptake of modern contraceptives. In 2020, Kenya attained a contraceptive prevalence of 61 per cent, surpassing the target of 58 per cent. This year, according to data released last week by the Performance Monitoring for Action Kenya 2021, the country is stuck at 61 per cent.
From the survey, the stagnant percentage could be as a result of worsening stock-outs that have been recorded in the country in the last two years for implants, injectables, pills and male condoms.
The main reason for stock-out episodes is the non-delivery of the ordered products, with less than 63 per cent of the facilities providing implants.
“Though there are many factors that can contribute to stock-outs, the majority of the facilities reported that they had ordered for the commodities but they were never delivered,” says the report.
