Teen Network Magazine january issue | Page 5

A LOOK INTO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH ARTICLE  BY FATIMA MUSTAFA  Looks at Reproductive health as a whole and the progress over the years. Is there something to celebrate? What are the challenges?  Reproductive Health addresses the reproductive process, functions and system of all life stages reproductive health can also be referred to as SEXUAL HEALTH. It mainly deals with matters affecting people in relation to their sexual lives, the whole reproduction process at large. Reproductive health is very important because it plays a big part in general health which affects the social economic and human development. A healthy population has the energy and creativity that promotes development. The main purpose of good reproductive health is to have responsible, satisfying and safer sex life and having the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. That is, knowing when to get into a sexual kind of relationship accepting what comes after, plan on the number of children one wishes to have and how to space them. It helps one to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. People have to be informed of effective affordable and acceptable ways of contraception and how they can get them. They also ought to have access to sexual reproductive health care services and work with educational programs that stress on the importance of women going through safe Pregnancy and child birth, giving couples a higher chance of healthy infants. Kenya for instance is working hard to ensure that its citizens get to know of the importance of having a small spaced family. A mother, after delivery is educated on family planning, how it works and when she can opt for them. Through the Maternal Child Health Family Planning (MCH/FP) program and organizations like UNFPA (the United Nation Population Fund). The government of Kenya made an original FP2020 commitment at the 2012 London Summit on Family planning with an update in 2017 - including specific policy, financial, and program and service delivery pledges- to meet their Family planning goals.