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{
    "id": 490932,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/490932/?format=api",
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    "content": "just to purchase sanitary pads but to also deal with other serious issues, for example, controlling early pregnancies and taking the young girls back to school. There was a policy which is still working in the universities that when you are pregnant, you go home, give birth and then go back to continue with studies. However, many young people fear stigmatization. Parents are also afraid to take their children back to the universities because they think they will become pregnant again. This becomes a big challenge to the young girl who would wish to go back to school. I have met a few; in Baringo one girl has gone back to school and has completed Form Four, in Kajiado within Maasai land, there is a girl who the father literally refused to let her go to school. But now that the girl is going to Form Three, he has accepted and started to appreciate that they can give birth and still go back to school and continue with their education. We have many of these cases out there and there is nobody who is making a follow up. This is when they come to follow up the case. We have nobody following up with that case. The other challenge we are facing is with medical institutions and especially the pharmacies we have today. I know that we have the e-pill, the Morning After pill and in Sen. Sijeny’s Bill, we will deal with these matters more broadly. However, if you carry out a research and visit most pharmacists on Monday, you will find that these pills are not available because young people took them over the weekend. Unfortunately, nobody has advised them on the side effects. They take the Morning After pill as they go out on Friday and another one on Saturday morning and another on Sunday morning. This is a very serious trend in our country. I am a Catholic and we may not want to talk about reproductive health with regard to young people. I have come out and said that we must also look at the issue from the church perspective. Most parents who are affected by this scenario hide in the church. They keep quiet about it because they do not want the priests to get annoyed with them. They also do not want to be seen as if they are not doing the right thing since they belong to the Catholic Women Association (CWA). They do not want to be seen doing the wrong things. However, this is an issue that we need to address. We need to address the issue in our schools or institutions of learning with openness and see how we will deal with the Maputo Protocol. How do we deal, as Kenyans, with the African Charter Article 14? I know that when we were signing the Protocol, we made sure that Article 14 was not part of what we signed. We have a challenge today with regard to reproductive health. These are our young people who are supposed to propel and move the country to the next level. However, most of them are facing the challenges we are discussing today. I have read many articles by researchers where young people are reported to say that they would rather become pregnant than get infected by the HIV/AIDS virus. This is a challenge at the university level. As we speak for the young ones, this is a challenge across the board that we need to address. We need to bring back sex education to schools without fear. At times, when we talk about these issues, people wonder. Some say that we are in the digital age and probably should not talk about them. However, the young people explore and learn about The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}