Health CS Nakhumicha says won’t give condoms to teens having sex: ‘Let them abstain’

Health Cabinet Secretary Susan Nakhumicha has said that she will not give condoms to underage Kenyans.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing African Union Summit 2023 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a video published by Nation on Sunday, the CS said as a Christian woman, she vouches for abstinence as a precautionary measure against STDs and pregnancies among teenagers.

“I am Mama Kanisa (a church woman), therefore number one is abstinence; that we teach our youth, our adolescents to abstain,” she said.

Nakhumicha noted that although condoms have been used across the world, her view is that Kenyan teenagers should be able to abstain with what she called “firm Christian foundations”.

“Where they cannot abstain, then of course, condoms have been said as one of the ways to use protection. But I believe with firm Christian foundations that our adolescents should be able to abstain,” the CS said.

Nakhumicha spoke during the joint African Union Development Agency – PEPFAR briefing commemorating 20 years of partnership to End HIV/AIDS as a public health threat in Africa and across the globe.

Her sentiments come a week after the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) executive director Winnie Byanyima urged Kenya to allow teenagers to access contraceptives.

Byanyima, who was on a State visit in the country noted that societal inequalities and injustices are driving up the HIV/AIDS pandemic and making specific groups of people, such as young women and adolescent girls, highly vulnerable to HIV infection.

“Increasing access isn’t just about putting clinics and making available contraceptives, it’s more than that, it’s about safe spaces where girls and young women can feel safe, have the privacy that they need and also have the choice of the method they want so as to protect themselves from infections, HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI’s).This is not happening for every girl and every woman,” she told Nation.

“If a girl is going to be exposed to situations where she is having sex, forced sex or consensual sex then she needs lifesaving protection. I wouldn’t want to see any child getting pregnant or getting infected just because of a moral argument that is not applicable and if it was really applicable would she be having sex?”