Lodwar – October 31, 2025 (Public Communication and Media Relations)
The Department of Health and Sanitation in collaboration with the White Ribbon Alliance Kenya have today launched the ‘Every Woman, Every Newborn Everywhere’ (EWENE) campaign in Turkana. This campaign seeks to create awareness in Turkana to ignite individual and collective action to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths.
Funded by UNFPA, this multi-agency campaign including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA, among other partners and advocates aims to address preventable maternal and newborn mortalities. This is through several targets including achieving 90% antenatal care (ANC) and postnatal care (PNC) visits and 80% skilled birth attendance.
The campaign focusses on countries like Kenya that are falling short of meeting the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which aims to lower the global maternal mortality rate to under 70 out of 100,000 live births and reduce neonatal mortality deaths significantly.
Turkana County’s maternal mortality ratio of 381 per 100,000 live births is above the national average of 355. The neonatal mortality stands at 21 per 1,000 live births, as reported in the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey.
The Director of Family Health, Gabriel Lopodo highlighted that between January and September 2025, the reported maternal deaths have also increased calling for heightened system strengthening.
“The County’s facility maternal mortality ratio reported in 2024-2025 was 73.25%, higher than the 2023-2024 equivalent of 64.93%. There is a need to strengthen all 11 sub-counties so they can offer essential services, such as blood transfusions, and minimize the distance patients must travel to Lodwar County Referral Hospital for referrals,” he said.
Maureen Mutindi, the Programs Associate at White Ribbon Alliance Kenya shared that the organization supports approximately 3.5 million women in Kenya through self-care training, health screening, community dialogue and policy initiatives.
“We need to prioritize programming and resources allocations to fit the top priorities for mothers and newborns and to reflect their lived realities,” she said.
The Deputy Director Policy Planning, Partnerships, Monitoring and Evaluation, Sarah Akiru recognized that the team would be equipped with skills to sensitize the community on antenatal care, importance of hospital deliveries, appropriate post-delivery care and feeding of the newborns.
She also added that sensitizing midwives and community health workers would foster cross-learning and sharing best global practices that would reduce death of mothers at birth, and newborns.
Present were the senior County Health management Team and Civil Society Organisation (CSO) Network among others. Members of the County Assembly present included Ewoi Emase Michael (Lapur Ward), Samuel Lomodo Lokale (Lokichar Ward), and Anarclet Esekon Lemuya (Kotaruk Ward).
