Quick Win News: Kenya’s Busia County Launches Three-Year Costed Reproductive Health Strategy

On May 15, the Busia County government launched a new three-year, 2.3 billion-shilling reproductive health strategy (2015-2017)—with a focus on family planning and reaching adolescents and youth with contraceptive information and services.

Advocacy for the costed strategy began in mid-2014 with an Opportunity Fund award to the Centre for the Study of Adolescence (CSA), a Kenyan civil society organization based in Nairobi with a long history of working with policymakers and community leaders in Busia. With support from Jhpiego Kenya, CSA employed an inclusive approach with the county government to ensure ownership, commitment and leadership by the key stakeholders in the RH sector.

“This strategy re-emphasizes the need to reduce the unmet need for family planning in Busia County and therefore recognizes the importance of achieving self-sustainability in family planning programming and service provision, which is possible only if the county government takes the responsibility of budgeting and for allocating financial resources for family planning commodities procurement.”            

–RH Strategy, County Government of Busia (2015-2017)

Governor Sospeter Ojaamong and County Executive Committee Member for Health Dr. Maurice Siminyu both expressed their commitment to implementing the RH strategy, and called on other development partners in the county to support various budget items in the strategy.  Dr. Siminyu pledged that the county will recruit 100 new health workers and dedicate 26 percent of its total budget to health in the next financial year (2015/2016). This represents a near doubling of the current health budget.

CSA is now working with the county health management team and county assembly leaders to ensure 6 percent of the health budget is allocated to family planning and disseminate the RH strategy among Busia’s seven sub-counties. Discussions are underway to convene a stakeholders’ forum to secure support and additional resources to implement the strategy.

Check out the media coverage of the launch here.