News

Friday June 4, 2010


HIV-infected Women Present Charges of Forced Sterilization to Namibia High Court

By Peter J. Smith

WINDHOEK, Namibia, June 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Namibian High Court will hear on Friday the cases of several women who allege that hospitals sterilized them by force, denying their right to motherhood, because they were diagnosed as HIV-positive.

Three Namibian women are being represented by the Legal Assistance Centre, a public interest firm representing the human rights cases, in their lawsuit against the state, which runs the two hospitals where the sterilizations are claimed to have taken place.

LAC says that reports of the forced sterilization of HIV-positive women at state hospitals began surfacing in 2007. Even after the Health Ministry was alerted to possible abuses, they say they had documented at least 15 cases of forced sterilizations occurring both in 2009 and 2010. These cases, they say, “appear to be merely the tip of the iceberg.”

In Namibia, one fifth of the rural south African country’s 2.1 million population is estimated to be infected with HIV.

The three women bringing their charges before the High Court are arguing that they did not give informed consent to the sterilization procedures. Demanding the equivalent of US $132,000, they will be the first of the fifteen cases LAC intends to bring before the high court.

The number of women forcibily denied the natural right to bear children, because they have HIV, may be much greater. Veronica Kalambi of the International Community of Women living with HIV (ICW), told AllAfrica.com that out of 230 women her organization interviewed, forty “were sterilized against their will.”

In some cases, the women say they were tricked into signing papers authorizing the procedure at critical moments during their treatment, such as during labor or c-section. In others, they were told that they would not receive medical care if they did not agree to be sterilized.

“I never signed a consent form,” said a woman going by the name Maria Oubaas to the African journal. Oubaas said she had six children, and was sterilized after her last child. “After I had given birth I was simply told that I would be ‘closed up.’”

Dr Georg Judmann, principal medical officer at St. Mary’s hospital in Rehoboth, where Oubaas’s sterilization is said to have taken place, vigorously denied the charge of coercion, saying it was “absolutely impossible.”

“Consent forms are signed in every case,” responded Judmann. “If the patient doesn’t speak English a nurse will translate the form.”

LSN reported last year that 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.

On June 1, according to the BBC, 300 women participated in a march against the alleged sterilizations in the capital. The next day, sit-ins were conducted at the two hospitals accused of carrying out the sterilizations, and further demonstrations are planned as the case moves forward.

See previous coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

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

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09062511.html

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