According to Susan Nakhumicha, the health cabinet’s secretary, she will not provide Kenyan minors with condoms.
The CS added in a video released by Nation on Sunday that she vouches for abstinence as a preventative measure against STDs and young pregnancies as a Christian lady speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing African Union Summit 2023 in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia.
The first thing we should educate our children and teenagers is abstinence because I am Mama Kanisa (a church woman),” she stated.
Although condoms have been used all around the world, Nakhumicha highlighted that in her opinion, teenagers in Kenya should be able to refrain with what she called “strong Biblical underpinnings.”
Condoms have been mentioned as a method of protection when a person is unable to abstain. Yet I believe with deep Christian grounds that our teenagers should be permitted to abstain,” the CS remarked.
Nakhumicha spoke at the briefing organized by the African Union Development Agency and PEPFAR to celebrate their 20-year partnership in the fight to eradicate HIV/AIDS as a public health issue in Africa and around the world.
Her words came a week after Winnie Byanyima, executive head of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), asked Kenya to permit teenagers to use contraception.
Byanyima, who was in the nation on a State visit, stated that social injustices and inequities are causing the HIV/AIDS epidemic to spread and rendering certain demographic groups, such young women and adolescent girls, particularly vulnerable to HIV infection.
“Improving access doesn’t only mean building clinics and making contraceptives available; it also means creating safe places where girls and young women can feel secure, have the privacy they require, and select the technique they like to use to protect themselves from diseases like HIV and STIs.
Not all girls and women are experiencing this, she told Nation.
“A girl requires life-saving protection if she is going to be exposed to situations where she is having sex, whether it be forced sex or voluntary intercourse. I don’t want to see any child become pregnant or infected because of a moral justification that is not relevant, and even if it were, would she still be having sex?
