MANDERA OCTOBER 27, 2015 (CISA) – The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, after visiting Mandera county, plans to provide primary assistance for 25,000 people.
The idea is to provide better products and services to improve mother-child care among the most vulnerable people.
They intend to provide more efficient medical supply chain, increase availability of services for young people, professional training, to help women and young people assume their responsibilities.
For many women in the town of Mandera, an unsafe, arid and hard to reach district, life is a continual struggle for survival, from infancy to adulthood.
Young girls suffer genital mutilation, which leaves permanent physical wounds, and most adolescent girls are stopped from going to school, and forced into marriage and early pregnancy.
Mandera is a typical marginalized community suffocated by local conflict, extremism, unstable human development and cross-border terrorism.
The report by the United Nations indicate that, these factors together cause high maternal mortality rates reaching 3,795 deaths every 100,000 babies born alive.
There is some hope for change however thanks to the decentralization of government, and the intervention of the United Nations, Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which have given more power to local authorities to open medical centres to provide basic mother-child care.
To further tackle the problem, a group of representatives of various bodies; Kenya’s presidency and Ministry of health, and the local Red Cross offices, and some officials from the UN Office have been sent there to help with the situation.
