Machakos — A sudden surge in reported teen pregnancies within Machakos County is threatening to cut short the pursuit for education by vulnerable girls with latest statistics now showing 4,000 school-going children had been impregnated since mid-March.
The data released during Tuesday's commemoration of the Day of the African Child showed a parallel in the number of newly reported teen pregnancies with coronavirus-related restrictions top among them the closure of schools to avert a catastrophic spread of the virus that has since spread to over thirty counties.
Machakos Children's Officer Salome Muthama, who the statistics was picked from cases recorded in all county hospitals, told Capital FM News the number could be higher.
Machakos Senior Resident Magistrate Charles Ondieki who had attended the function revealed the biggest impediment in prosecuting the cases was shortage of advocates handling the matters.
"Cases that involve children demand advocates but the problem now is to get them and as a magistrate I am not allowed to go get them," said Ondieki.
