The Nakuru county director for public health, Mrs Elizabeth Kiptoo has urged Parents to take the learning process of their children seriously because there’s a strong linkage between good health and education.
The director said various health researchers have consistently shown that education was a critical factor influencing people’s health and the usage of health services. She was speaking today during training of public health officials at a Nakuru City hotel.
She said the National Council for Population and Development reports have consistently proved that the use of family planning and other reproductive health services is quite low among women with no education, including those who have not finished primary school.
Additionally, she said only one in ten women with no education uses family planning services, compared to six in ten of those with a secondary or higher level of education.
Apart from that, she said among pregnant women, only one in ten with no education delivers in a health facility compared to seven in ten among those with secondary education or higher.
Moreover, she said the low use of these reproductive health services has contributed to a high number of unintended pregnancies as well as maternal, and child illnesses and even deaths.
Thus, Kiptoo maintained that improvements in reproductive health will depend in part on increasing education enrollment and retention rates across all levels of education, especially for girls.
However, she noted that even the simple maintenance of hygienic conditions of one’s environment and the proper management of garbage was highly influenced by education levels.
She appealed to parents and guardians to enhance the cleanliness lessons taught in schools by assigning their children cleaning chores in homesteads so as to promote healthy environments for their communities.
