By STEPHANIE LINNING FOR MAILONLINE and REUTERS
HIV-positive women in Uganda are being subject to forced sterilisation, a new report shows.
Pregnant women in the country are tested for HIV as part of routine screening for the virus.
However some health workers abuse their positions and sterilise women without asking for consent, believing it to be the best course of action, the report by the International Community of Women living with HIV Eastern Africa (ICWEA) found.
One woman, who gave her name as Ida, told the group that she was sterilised at a government hospital in Kampala after she sought treatment for abdominal pains while pregnant.
She lost her baby and was given the news she was HIV positive.
She said she woke to find dressings on her stomach but only discovered that she had been sterlised after she spent years trying to conceive.
She said: ‘I was in a lot of pain and the situation was bad. They told me they were going to clean my womb. They took me to the examination room and asked me how many children I had. I told them I had four.
‘They were using English. I did not understand what they were saying because I never studied English. They told me they were going to give me treatment. Later when I gained consciousness I saw a dressing on my belly, but because I was in great pain, I couldn’t ask questions.’
After the miscarriage, Ida tried for some years to get pregnant again. Eventually she went to another hospital, where she was examined and told her fallopian tubes had been cut without her knowledge.
Another woman claims she was told she was being given an injection ‘to stop her falling pregnant for five years’ and only later found out that her uncle had signed a form consenting to her sterilisation.
She said: ‘Upon hearing that, I started shedding tears. This has greatly affected my health. I just struggle to accept the situation.’
Of the 744 HIV-positive women surveyed by the ICWEA, 72 had been sterilised. Twenty of them had been forced to undergo the procedure, or it had happened without their consent.
Hajarah Nagadya of ICWEA said that 18 of the 20 forced sterilisations had been carried out in government hospitals, and two cases occurred in private clinics.
None of the 20 women who underwent forced sterilisations had sought legal redress and said they felt there was no one to support them, the ICWEA report said.
‘I have not heard of any organisation or laws for addressing my problem,’ one of the women was quoted as saying in the report.
‘I think the government should put in place a law and sensitise women about the issues related to sterilisation and the laws that can support women living with HIV.’
The ICWEA report said most violations of women’s sexual and reproductive health rights – including forced sterilisation – occurred during childbirth, particularly when women were delivering by Caesarean section.
A spokesman for Uganda’s Ministry of Health said it was not government policy to sterilise women living with HIV/AIDS.
Asuman Lukwago, the permanent secretary at the ministry, said such cases of forced sterilisation were a criminal offence. However, he said there may be exceptional circumstances in which doctors may decide to sterilise women if they believed their lives would be in danger in pregnancy.
According to UNAIDS 2015 estimates, Uganda has an HIV prevalence rate of 7.1 percent among adults aged 15 to 49. An estimated 790,000 women aged 15 and over are living with HIV in the east African country.
This story was picked from Mail Online via
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3772917/HIV-positive-Ugandan-women-complain-forced-sterilisation-government-hospitals.html
