Men from the Gusii Community have been challenged to shun outdated cultural beliefs against family planning, instead embrace it in order to have manageable and healthy children.
The National Council on Population and Development (NCPD) Nyanza-South Regional Co-ordinator, Maurice Oduor has reminded men from the region that they have a duty to ensure they give birth to healthy and manageable children in order to reduce child mortality cases attributed to unmanageable large families.
Speaking in his office Oduor lamented that myths and misconceptions among men about family planning had resulted in uncontrolled birth rate.
"I am challenging men from the local communities to take family planning positively and shed the negative mindset towards family planning which is a development tool meant to enhance quality and health families through giving birth to the number of children one can afford to take care of," stated Oduor
Oduor said times have changed and clinging to outdated cultural beliefs that one has to give birth to several children so that if some died he will have others to inherit his land and property.
Having high population growth rates, Oduor observed was not only a threat to individual socio-economic development but was also a burden to the Government in terms of resource mobilization and allocation.
"Family Planning is development policy issue and if not applied then the rate at which the population grows across the country will overstretch existing public resources and lead to underdevelopment due to inadequate resources to fund the Government's projects and programmes meant to enhance socio-economic development," observed Oduor.