Hospitals Said to be Sterilising HIV+ Women; Claim Made that 20 Percent of Cases are Forcibly given Operation. 4/6/10

REGIONAL human rights organisations have uncovered refugees and South African HIV-positive women who claim to have been sterilised against their will.

REGIONAL human rights organisations have uncovered refugees and South African HIV-positive women who claim to have been sterilised against their will.

The claims by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, the Her Rights Initiative and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa) come in the middle of a case involving six HIV-positive Namibian women who are taking the state in that country to court over forced sterilisation.

Promise Mthembu - a representative of the Her Rights Initiative - said while the investigation was still in its early stages, the organisation was picking up trends, and the practice appeared to be more widespread in South Africa than was originally thought.

She said the practice was being reported mainly in tertiary hospitals. But unlike the cases in Namibia, where the women did not know what had happened to them, in South Africa women were told what doctors had done.

Mthembu said the research so far had shown that, on average, 20 percent of HIV-positive women in hospital have been forcibly sterilised.

"It usually happens when women are admitted to hospital for a pregnancy and for abortions," Mthembu said.

"Many HIV-positive women are given a C-section to prevent mother-to-child transmission, and they are sterilised then.

"But sometimes it will even happen after a vaginal birth. The mother gives birth and is wheeled into theatre. The doctor says 'we don't want you here again with child because you are HIV-positive'."

Mthembu added that not only HIV-positive women were reporting this happening to them. She said there were cases of refugee women in the country who fall pregnant and go to hospital for treatment.

"The nurse then tells them they do not have an ID and that if they want treatment, they have to sign a piece of paper saying they agree to be sterilised when they give birth.

"The women feel they have no choice and they sign the paper," she said.

Mthembu said this had been happening in South Africa since the 1990s, but they had cases of women reporting this happening to them in 2009.

Nicole Fritz from the Southern Africa Litigation Centre said it appeared from what they have heard that this was happening under an unwritten policy and not simply because certain healthcare workers were prejudiced against marginalised women.

"It must be an unsaid policy directive," she said. "There is no explicit law compelling doctors to sterilise HIV-positive women, but it can't simply be an enabling environment. This kind of operation requires resources, medical personnel and time in theatre," Fritz said.

Mthembu said women had not come forward with this before because it was something they were ashamed of.

"We are finding that women will tell their partners they have HIV, but they won't say they have been sterilised."

She said access to ARVs in South Africa was more of a concern, but now that they were available, other stories of discrimination were starting to emerge.

"We are trying to get as many women as we can to come forward to document what has been happening," she said, describing sterilisation as "torture".