Salma Kadama, a 22-year-old mother of three is a resident of Miatsani Village, Kwale County.\u00a0Salma had all her three children within a span of six (6) years at a time when she knew nothing about child spacing.\u00a0Her youngest child aged one year is currently enrolled in a feeding programme at Kizibe Dispensary.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Embracing Child Spacing<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI have three children and my husband has no job to support a big family. When I attended the dialogue, the village elders, religious leaders and nurses explained the different benefits of family planning methods. I heard about the injection as one of the methods for child spacing. I saw the need to plan my family because I come from a poor background. When I came to the hospital, I asked for the injection.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Kadama explains that she enrolled for family planning when her youngest baby was 10 months old. She says, \u201cBefore embracing the modern method, I used to get pregnant every eight months later followed by miscarriages. I am sure I will now take a break of two years or more. This will help me to take care of this baby and I am hoping to get even healthier.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamisi, the Facility Nurse at Kizibe says, \u201cFamily planning uptake has improved since Amref Health Africa began supporting social mobilisation. From the beginning, we had fewer family planning clients but now we have an average of 100 clients a month who have been enrolled on various methods.\u201d<\/p>\n Kadama says she has not experienced any challenges with the method she chose. She was, however, later counselled on all the other available methods by the Facility Nurse but she opted to continue with the injection.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Public Health Leader, Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) and Public Health Officers have talked to us about the importance of child spacing. They have even held barazas here in our village explaining to us everything according to our religion. Now we are sure that we are not going against our religion when we accept these child spacing methods,\u201d adds Kadama.<\/p>\n \u201cFamily planning knowledge used to be very low as the community thought the health workers were against them having children. Now with social mobilisation, knowledge has increased and people have slowly begun treating family planning as a priority. I thank Amref for coming through. We are now able to reach out to the community and we are observing some changes,\u201d says Hamisi.<\/p>\n The DESIP Programme is implemented through a consortium led by PS Kenya in collaboration with Population Services International (PSI), Amref Health Africa in Kenya, Options Consultancy Services, Faith To Action (F2A) Network, HealthRight International (HRI) and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) Kenya.<\/p>\n Targeting poor women and adolescent girls, women under 20 years and people living with disabilities in 19 counties across the country, the anticipated programme impact is a reduction in maternal, new-born and child mortality while increasing more sustainable and equitable access to modern contraceptives.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Salma Kadama, a 22-year-old mother of three is a resident of Miatsani Village, Kwale County.\u00a0Salma had all her three children within a span of six (6) years at a time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":1606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[34,35,1850,104,54,1856,158,159,38,1858,1851,1861,170,312,480,1857,1859,1852,1860,1862],"class_list":["post-1605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-stories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/amref.org\/kenya\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/01\/Salmas-2-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n