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Namibia - Supreme Court Upholds
Sterilisation Without Consent Verdict of HIV-Postitive Women
4 November 2014 - Namibia's Supreme Court has upheld a ruling
that health workers sterilised HIV-positive women without their consent.
The original 2012 judgment had found that health workers
had coerced three HIV-positive mothers to sign sterilisation consent forms they
did not fully understand, while in labour.
The Southern Africa Litigation Centre said the ruling sends a
message to the government to stop the practice in the southwestern African
nation, and elsewhere on the continent.
Priti Patel, deputy director and HIV programme manager for the
centre, told Al Jazeera the case was far from isolated.
"What we think should happen now is that the government of
Namibia needs to step up and start investigating the claims of these other
women," she said.
"The government needs to take active steps to make sure
this stops happening.
"This decision has far-reaching consequences not only for
HIV-positive women in Namibia but for the dozens of HIV-positive women
throughout Africa who have been forcibly sterilised," Patel said.
Other cases have been documented in South Africa and Kenya, she
said.
Sterilisation is a drastic tactic to treat HIV-positive women,
as mother-to-child transmission of HIV and AIDS can be prevented with
medication.
Namibia's high court will assess how much money the three women
should be awarded, according to the centre.
Further allegations
The women had all sought care at government hospitals in Namibia
while in labour, with one woman signing a form that used only acronyms to
describe the procedure, while another signed after being told she did not have
a choice, the centre said.
Since the case was first filed in 2009, dozens more women
have spoken of cases of similar experiences at public hospitals to
the Namibian Women's Health Network (NWHA).
The NWHA first began documenting allegations of forced
sterilisation of HIV-positive women in 2007.
"These three women are only the tip of the iceberg,"
the network's director Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet said in a statement.
"The government needs to take active steps to ensure all
women subjected to this unlawful practice get redress."
About 250,000 Namibians, more than 10 percent of the population,
are living with HIV according to UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on
HIV and AIDS.