About fifty women were sterilized after childbirth, without being clearly informed beforehand.
South Africa is rocked by an investigation. Launched in 2015 by two women’s rights organizations, it reveals that around fifty women have been sterilized without having been clearly informed beforehand. They were all infected with AIDS.
Pressure from some caregivers
The Commission for Gender Equality in South Africa gathered the testimonies of 48 women who were sterilized between 2002 and 2015 during cesarean delivery. “When they were about to give birth (…) they were coerced or forced to sign forms which they later learned were consent forms allowing the hospital to sterilize them through various means”, specifies the report issued by the organization. Several of these women were allegedly threatened by hospital staff: if they did not sign the document, they would not receive medical care. The report states that some women said they received the form when they were in a moment of “extreme pain”, which prevented them from clearly understanding the content of these documents.
Serious human rights violations
Many suffered from depression afterwards, some were abandoned by their husbands because of their infertility. One of these women explained that she did not find out until a few years later what had happened to her. While consulting a doctor about her recent infertility, she learned that one of her fallopian tubes had been severed.
Another such woman asked her nurse: “Why sign this form?” The caregiver replied:You people with HIV don’t ask yourself questions when you have babies. Why are you asking questions now, you should be sterilized, people living with HIV, you like making babies, and it bothers us. Sign the forms, go.” For the Gender Equality Commission, it is “serious human rights violations” and of “degrading treatment”. Complaints have been filed by the victims.
According to UNAIDSmore than 7 million South Africans were living with HIV in 2018.
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