Story By: Ernest Bio Bogore, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
Black women in South Africa suffering from HIV were forcibly sterilised in hospitals without their knowledge for over a decade it has been claimed.
The allegations were made public this week together with a call for government action based on findings from research dating back to 2015.
Based on the findings, two women’s rights organisations have approached the Commission for Gender Equality in South Africa (CGE) with evidence of 48 documented cases of forced sterilisation. As a result of the complaint, the CGE has investigated and collected sworn testimony from complainants confirming the allegations.
The head of the CGE, Keketso Maema, was quoted as saying in the report released Monday: “All the women who filed complaints were black women who were predominantly HIV positive.”
The document states: “As they were about to give birth… they were forced or coerced to sign forms that they later learned were consent forms allowing the hospital to sterilise them by various means.”
All of the cases mentioned in the report occurred between 2002 and 2015. Investigators found that hospital staff threatened to refuse medical care to the affected women if they did not sign the consent forms.
According to the investigation, some of the complainants said they received the forms during times of “extreme pain” when they could not fully understand the contents of the forms and what they were signing.
All of the women gave birth by caesarean section, facilitating a sterilisation surgery. Many fell into depression after discovering that they could no longer have children, and some were abandoned by their spouses.
One of these victims told investigators that she had belatedly discovered that her Fallopian tubes in which the egg is fed through to the uterus for fertilisation had been severed after childbirth.
She reportedly only found out when she visited a private doctor later to have them investigate her recent infertility.
She learned what happened to her several years after she consulted a private doctor where she was getting treatment for infertility. After giving birth, she had been in the hospital for an unusually long time to be treated for an infection of her scar after a caesarean section.
The report states: “She was never informed of what happened to her.”
Another complainant had to sign the forms, and when she asked the nurse why she had to do so, she was told: “You people with HIV don’t ask questions when you make babies.
“Why are you asking questions now, you should be sterilised, people living with HIV, you like making babies, and it bothers us. Sign the forms and leave.”
The commission concluded that these women were exposed to serious human rights violations and “degrading treatment”. In addition, it accused the hospital staff of failing in their “duty of care”.
The report was forwarded to the South African Department of Health, which declined to comment at this time.
The total number of people living with HIV in South Africa has increased from approximately 4.64 million in 2002 to 7.97 million in 2019, according to government statistics.
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