Today, July 21st, 2016 during the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, hundreds of people came together to take part in a march that will always remain highly symbolic to women living with HIV.
It was the march against forced and coerced sterilization. Being part of the march was a way of saying out loud and clear that you are against the injustice of violating the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights of women living with HIV especially forced and coerced sterilization.
This march is as a result of findings in a study by The International Community of Women Living with HIV titled, Violation of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of women living with HIV in Clinical and Community setting in Uganda.
The study was conducted in 2014 and 2015 and it found that women living with HIV experience a wide range of violations in clinical settings, their homes and communities. The most common violation is forced and coerced sterilization.
The report bears a number of women’s experiences. Some of the women narrate that they were told that their fallopian tubes were going to be “tied” in local dialect so they thought that they would be “untied” when they wanted to give birth again, the actual implication of the procedure was not explained to them and neither was it done with their consent. Even if this is illegal, the medic did it anyway.
This study took place between 2014 and 2015, in nine districts of Uganda. It involved a field survey targeting 744 women living with HIV selected from rural areas, small towns and urban areas. Of these, 72 reported cases of sterilizations taking place at an average age of 29 years. Out of these, 20 women had been coerced or forced to undergo this irreversible operation. Most cases occurred in government hospitals during childbirth by caesarean section. They were authorised by health workers and relatives of the women living with HIV.
The medical fraternity, government and the entire community needs to acknowledge that this vice is happening and take steps to end it.
This should start with reaching out to women living with HIV, communities, health workers and men and educating them about the rights of women living with HIV and the fact that forced and coerced sterilization is illegal. Information on Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) should also be integrated in the current HIV&AIDS programmes and services. The tubal legation protocols need to be developed and should be communicated during antenatal clinic visits. Health workers need to be trained in offering professional care without violating women’s rights, ensuring that informed consent processes are of high quality.
The current HIV and Sexual Reproductive Health policies also need to be reviewed, taking into account SRHR violations. And for the women that have experienced these violations, counselling services at community level are necessary to offer psychosocial support.
And to make an example out of the current cases, women who have experienced these violations should be offered legal support as is happening in Kenya an like it happened in Namibia.
So today, as women living with HIV we are saying, do not tamper with our bodies without consent.
Full report here: ICWEA-Sexual-Reproductive-Health-Rights-Report-Uganda.pdf
