Birth control pill now cheaper

Women will now be able to access a newly introduced family planning pill after its price was reduced.

The oral contraceptive, known as Microgynon, will now retail for Sh100 down from the previous price of between Sh300 and Sh350 in pharmacies.

The pill, which is the world’s most widely used oral contraceptive, is manufactured by Bayer Healthcare and distributed by Surgipharm.

According to a press release, the price was lowered following an innovative public-private partnership between Bayer Healthcare and the United States Agency for International Development (USAid).

“The partnership is designed to make more affordable family planning choices available to women through the private sector and address the growing demand for contraceptives...” said Ms Andrea Harris USAid’s senior technical advisor for the initiative in Washington.

The Bayer-USAid partnership will also be rolled out in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ghana. It will be expanded to several more Sub-Saharan countries by 2014.

The public-private partnership is aimed at assisting governments to meet their Millennium Development Goals. Though the pill is supposed to be provided free of charge in public hospitals, it is rarely available thus most women end up buying it in private pharmacies.

According to Dr Francis Odawa, a gynaecologist at the Kenyatta National Hospital, oral contraceptives are 99 per cent effective when used consistently and correctly.

“They provide women with reversible family planning methods that are easy to discontinue and provide a rapid return to fertility,” he added.

According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, Kenyan women experience a high unmet need for family planning. In 2008/2009 for example, 26 per cent of married women had an unmet need for spacing births and for limiting births.

Demand for plan

In Kenya, the total fertility rate (TFR) declined from 4.9 children for women in 2003 to 4.6 children in 2009. As expected, rural areas recorded higher fertility than urban areas (TFR of 5.2 and 2.9 respectively).

The survey shows that fertility is lowest in Nairobi province (2.8 children per woman), followed by Central Province at 3.4 children per woman and highest in NorthEastern province (5.9 children ).

Fertility in Western (5.6), Nyanza (5.4), Coast (4.8) and Rift Valley (4.7) provinces is slightly above the national average.