Here are two reproductive health news stories that we have been following over the past few days:

Waiting for justice in Kenya

Faith Karimi

CNN

She calmly recounts her story, her voice firm, her face stoic, in a dim room in Nairobi's Kibera slums.

A year ago, amid the post-election violence that killed more than 1,300 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others in Kenya, a police officer kicked her door two times and ordered her to open it. If she didn't, he said, he would tear it down on the third kick, the woman said.

She unlocked the door.

"He then slapped me ... and I fell on a water container, begging him not to hit me," she says in a video released by CARE International. "... Then he sexually assaulted me right in front of my children."

The woman is one of 300 interviewed by the nonprofit to provide evidence to the Waki Commission, which was formed to investigate violence and crime after the disputed Kenya elections in December 2007. More than 3,000 rapes were committed during that period, according to the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya. CNN does not identify victims of sexual abuse.

 

Teen Pregnancy in Nigeria Perpetrates Health Risks, Poverty

Brian Padden

Voice of America News 

The United Nations says 53,000 women in Nigeria die annually of pregnancy-related illnesses. That is one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Doctors and youth counselors in Nigeria say teenage mothers are more at risk because of poverty, lack of access to health care, and a culture that does not like to talk about sex.

Pedro Village is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Lagos, Nigeria. Most people maintain a meager existence by fishing and doing odd jobs. There are not a lot of opportunities here, but there are a lot of children and teenage mothers.
Dr. Mariam Jagun, with Compass, a Nigerian health organization, says more than 20 percent of adolescents girls in this neighborhood are mothers.

"For teenage pregnancy the problem about it is, because they are pregnant early and they are not prepared for it, they are less likely to go for antenatal care," Jagun said.

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