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EXCLUSIVE: African Hospitals Funded by U.S. PEPFAR Program Accused of Forcibly Sterilizing HIV-Positive Women

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA, June 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - African AIDS patients say they are being forcibly sterilized in hospitals funded by the United States' international AIDS program PEPFAR, LifeSiteNews has learned.

Dozens of women in Namibia claim that personnel in the PEPFAR-funded public hospital system used various methods to force or coerce them into receiving tubal ligations because of their HIV-positive status. Women's activists in the country believe the total number of victims is far greater.

Amon Mgazateme, an attorney representing several of the women, told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that all of the victims who have approached him are HIV positive, and believe that they were sterilized because of it. All were sterilized in the government's public health system.

Out of the 20 women who have approached him so far, "we have so far been able to have concrete evidence ... for about 15 women," Mgazateme told LSN in a telephone interview. "We are beginning to institute legal action against the government for about 6 cases only, so far."

In some cases, the women say they were tricked into signing papers authorizing the procedure at delicate moments during their treatment. In others, they were told that they would not receive medical care if they did not agree to be sterilized.

Namibia's Ministry of Health receives tens of millions of dollars a year from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), according to a U.S. government source.

In 2007, the last year for which data is available, PEPFAR gave over $16.6 million to the Namibian agency, which oversees the nation's public hospital system and implements PEPFAR-funded AIDS programs within the hospitals.

LSN has also learned that a group of U.S. House and Senate committee staff visited Namibia as late as 2008 to discuss the PEPFAR-funded AIDS program at Katatura State Hospital, one of the institutions accused of carrying out the sterilizations.   

PEPFAR was also a sponsor of a global meeting on AIDS in the Namibian capital of Windhoek, from June 11 to 14 of this year, hosted by the Namibian government, which also included UN organizations such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and others.

However, PEPFAR media spokeswoman Jennifer Peterson told LSN she was not aware of the allegations, and could not make an official comment about them, referring this news agency to the PEPFAR representative in the U.S. Embassy in Namibia. As of press time LSN has not been able to reach him for comment.

The accusations of forced sterilizations were first brought to light by the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), a human rights group for AIDS patients active in Namibia.

The ICW says that it suspects the cases it has detected are "the tip of the iceberg." Out of 230 HIV-positive women they interviewed for a recent study on the issue, 40 said they had been sterilized by force or coercion in public hospitals in Namibia, or about 17 percent.

"They were in pain, they were told to sign, they didn't know what it was," Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet, an ICW official, told Britain's Guardian newspaper. "They thought that it was part of their HIV treatment. None of them knew what sterilization was, including those from urban areas, because it was never explained to them."

Hilma Nendongo, a victim who spoke to Britain's Globe and Mail newspaper about her experience, said she was devastated by the news that she would no longer be able to have children.

"It's because you are poor and you cannot demand your rights. You can't question a doctor. The doctor knows you can't report him -- he is protected by the government," she said. "My doctor did it to me because I was HIV positive and he thought I shouldn't have more children."

The women say the sterilizations were performed in three public hospitals overseen by the Ministry of Health: Katatura State Hospital, Central State Hospital, and Oshakati State Hospital, ICW reports.

"The reality of HIV-positive women's experiences in the health sector is drastically different from the standards that the Namibian government articulates in the National HIV/AIDS policy," the group states in its study on the abuses.

"Cases of forced sterilization have demonstrated that the Namibian government has failed to realize these rights or create an environment in which such rights could be realized," the organization writes, adding that its report "demonstrates that the government of Namibia is complicit in the unethical practice of sterilizing positive women."
 

Contact Information:

President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
Jennifer Peterson:
Phone: 202 663 2708
Email: PetersonJL@state.gov

Ray Castillo (US Embassy, Namibia):
Phone: 264 81 128 0816
CastilloRA@state.gov

President Barack Obama, White House
Email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461

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