干旱破坏肯尼亚的树木以进行节育

[肯尼亚加里萨]Climate changerelated impacts ravaging semi-arid northern Kenya has affected traditional family planning methods for thousands of households, traditional healers say.

Prolonged droughtsand high temperatures have decimated trees used in producing various family planning herbal concoctions for generations.

Village herbal banks — stores for herbalmedicines- 正在经历减少股票，并被肯尼亚 - 索马里亚边境偏远村庄的成千上万的牧民争夺。

“[Family planning] services here in Dadajibula are over-stretched and our supplies can only last for the next one month.”

Qali Hassan, Dadajibula village, Kenya

在访问草药银行妇女期间教育生育周期和各种计划生育的妇女从树木（例如巴兰特人aegyptiaceaandAcacia。

“Herbal medicine plays a key role in providing alternativehealthcareto people living in rural areas of Kenya and it’s high time the government and other stakeholders appreciated [the] role played by the sector and work on mechanism of mainstreaming it into the modern health system,” says Julius Mwangi, a professor of pharmacognosy at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

姆万吉（Mwangi）敦促肯尼亚遵循坦桑尼亚的例子，在那里互补和替代医学实践已纳入医疗保健系统。

Qali Hassan, a traditional healer managing a herbal bank in Dadajibula village, toldscidev.net在上个月（3月23日）的一次采访中，她估计有1000名来自其他村庄和城镇的客户寻找物资，但由于需求较高和供应量低，她没有足够的供应。

“[Family planning] services here in Dadajibula are over-stretched and our supplies can only last for the next one month when we will be forced to shut the ‘bank’ and pray for divine intervention,” says Hassan. “We expected the El-Nino rains to change things so that we get flowers and leaves to produce some concoctions and monthly herbal pills but we only experienced erratic showers and flash floods from the Ethiopian highlands which swept the border villages.”

Hassan adds that the affected customers are now resorting to birth spacing through prolonged breastfeeding and abstinence from regular sexual intercourse.

来自达达布地区偏远的萨雷索村（Saretho Village）的客户哈利玛·阿多（Halima Adow）说，她已经用完了草药的计划生育调料，迫使她出售两只瘦弱的山羊，从遥远的达达吉布拉草药银行（Dadajibula Herbal Banks）购买用品，但供应可能很快就会用尽。

“I have used these traditional methods for 20 years now and they are good. They are made from known trees. What is available in hospitals is not supported by my Islamic religion,” Adow says.

阿杜解释说,她用每月药片the 7th day of her menstrual cycle and another on the 13th day to control birth and give her ample time to rear goats.

肯尼亚北部加里萨县Al-Shiffa疗养院工作的妇科医生Abajillo Jaldesa告诉scidev.net：“该方法是安全的，混合物和药物是由掌握的老年人准备的indigenous 知识。It is a local alternative to the conventional family planning method abhorred by locals due to the religious barrier.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.