The Kilifi County government has been forced to relook into the Kilifi County Sexual Reproductive Health law that came into force in 2016.
Kilifi County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Health Charles Dadu said that as a department they came to realize that the law was passed without factoring critical issues touching on the Kilifi situation.
“This is not a national government legislation but a Kilifi county government legislation and every county has its own issues and that is the reason we are discussing the law so that it conforms to the needs of residents,” he said.
Speaking at Silver palm hotel during a stakeholders’ forum Dadu said that the County has been holding stakeholder meetings and engaging the public in collecting views that can make the law appeal locally.
“When we discovered that there was discomfort with the legislation we immediately started collecting views and presenting them to our legal department for considerations. The legal department has done a good job and we hope we shall have a good law,” he said.
Kilifi county Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Coordinator Kenneth Miriti said the new law is also targeting protection of new bone from attracting HIV virus.
Speaking during the forum, the coordinator revealed that HIV infection from mother to child have been increasingly alarming in the county moving to 11 percent, the rates being higher than the national whose infection rate stand at 8 percent.
Speaking at the same forum, Mr. Omar Mwamuye who is the project officer of Rising Youth Initiative said that the County legal department and the Kilifi County Assembly failed to consider crucial issues when passing the law such as the needs of pregnant mothers and adolescents.
He added that stakeholders moved to court to prevent the county administration from implementing the law forcing a new county government to call for consensus meetings to iron out the thorny issues.
“The law was passed by the County assembly in 2016 but as stakeholders we realized sexual reproductive health rights on adolescents and pregnant mothers had not been captured fully and hence we moved to court to stop its implementation,” he said.
He cited issues such as rights to abortion as some of the areas that were disregarded by the formulators of the law.
“We saw fault in the law because there was no consideration on abortions and some other elements which were critical in sexual reproductive health,” he added.
IAN BYRON