THE EFFECTS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE WELL-BEING OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS IN PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN UASIN GISHU COUNTY, KENYA

Background: Globally, Closures of schools to mitigate the increase of COVID-19 have caused unprecedented disruption for nearly 1.6 billion school going children across the globe. Those affected the most are adolescent girls extremely in developing countries and the poorest households. Methods: Cross-sectional, quasi-representative survey of pre-post analysis, using a randomized sample from the adolescent girls in public primary schools. In total, 48 school administrators (24 head teachers and 24 deputy head teachers) and 14,917 pupils from 24 public primary schools in north rift region of Kenya. Therefore, the study population will be 30 administrators and 2378 adolescent girls in public primary schools in Uasin Gishu County of Kenya in 2021 and 2022. A sample size of 343 was assumed as the proportion suitable for this study using stratified random sampling techniques. Results: Majority were in the age bracket of 11-14 years old accounting for 174 (74.0%) compared to 61 (26.0%). Those in class 7 were the majority represented by 100 (42.6%); class 6 accounted for 87 (22.2%) while class 8 accounted for 48 (20.4%). The COVID- 19 containment guidelines were largely violated among the adolescent girls, which is a confirmation of behaviour change and lack of observation of prevention and control measures. not able to have increased access to economic opportunities, better health outcomes or useful, empowering knowledge, attitude and skills due to COVID- 19 Pandemic disruptions to key socioeconomic factors that support various families with composite mean score of (1.58, S,D .858) indicating strong disagreement with all the fifteen items that measured state of COVID- 19 outbreak impacts on wellbeing of adolescent girls. The findings showed that the Pearson’s correlation between COVID- 19 pandemic containment guidelines and the wellbeing of adolescent girls is [R =-0.624, p = 0.000], wellbeing and lockdown measure [R = 0.966, p = 0.000], stay at home measure [R = 0.921, p = 0.000], group gathering restrictions measure [R = 0.926, p = 0.000] and COVID- 19 Pandemic [R = 0.832, p = 0.000], showing a statistically significant bivariate association between the independent and dependent variables. Increased COVID- 19 Pandemic containment guidelines led to greater disruptions of basics of wellbeing environment. School closure had -0.718; Lockdown measure indicated -0.802; stay at home -0.679; while group gathering restrictions showed -0.812 all revealing significant bivariate associations with wellbeing of adolescent girls all explaining 53.2% of the wellbeing dimensions in this paper [R2 = 0.532, p = 0.000, ß = 0.615, t =5.857, ?= 0.000]. Therefore, the hypothesis that “hypothesis that COVID-19 pandemic restriction guidelines do not affect wellbeing of adolescent girls” is rejected and concluded that there is an effect of COVID -19 pandemic restriction guidelines on wellbeing of adolescent girls among the public primary schools. Conclusions: COVID -19 pandemic restriction guidelines has greater negative effects on wellbeing of adolescent girls among the public primary schools. Adolescent girls experienced disrupted fundamental acquisition, access, distribution and delivery of education, health, economic empowerment, all gender-based-violence forms, water-sanitation-hygiene, conflicts-emergency-humanitarian-settings, as well as adolescent girls’ intersecting needs leading to declining state of wellbeing.