Kenya mulls program to curb suicide deaths

Kenyan authorities will soon roll out a program to curb incidents of increasing number of teen suicide deaths that have resulted from online content that drive young people to kill themselves.

Principal Secretary in charge of Social Protection, Susan Mochache, said on Tuesday the police have received a number of reports about a sinister social media challenge dubbed "Blue Whale Challenge" that is available via an app and which encourages young people to complete self-harm challenges and eventually suicide.

"We are going to launch an awareness campaign online to caution parents and their children on the dangers of downloading the dangerous app to play the nasty game. It is probably time now for parents to monitor what their young ones are looking at on their phones," the PS said.

Mochache made the remarks in Nairobi during the launch of the Child Protection Information Management Systems (CPIMS), which is a web-based date structure developed by the Department of Social Services to collect, aggregate and report child protection data.

It is estimated that 54.4 percent of Kenya's population is below the age of 18 years and therefore majority of Kenyans are children.

The National Situation Analysis on the state of the Kenyan child in 2014 showed that despite the gains made in effort to end violence against children, 40 percent of Kenyan children had been abused.

The nationwide hybrid system will incorporate both child-level data for case management and a statistical system to facilitate monitoring.

It will also evaluate child protection interventions in order to inform policy and evidence based-decision making.

Last weekend, a 16-year-old schoolboy committed suicide in Nairobi after playing the horror and crazy Blue Whale Challenge.

The boy's grandmother said he had confided in her that he benefited from playing the game even though he knew it was dangerous.

According to reports, when the player signs up for the game, they are assigned an administrator who provides them with a daily task to complete for 50 days of which they must send photographic proof of completion.

These tasks are initially simple, but on the 50th and final day, they are asked to kill themselves.

The Director of Children Services, Noah Sanganyi, said over 30,000 children are registered for the child protection service, which includes issues of child marriage, female genital mutilation and child abuse.

"In order to reach and give better service to children, quality date which will give direction on children issues is required," Sanganyi noted. Endit