One in Four HIV-Positive Women in Central America Pressured to Sterilize - Study Katie Nguyen - Thomson Reuters Foundation
go to original July 29, 2014

In a 2010 file photo, Alba, a 38-year-old with HIV since 2003 and mother of four boys who do not have HIV, stands with two of her sons inside the Integral Attention Center of Escuela hospital in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. (Reuters/Edgard Garrido)

HIV-positive women in Central America are being pressured to undergo sterilization by prejudiced health workers and misled about the risk of the virus being transmitted to their unborn children, a study showed.

A survey of 285 women living with HIV in El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua found that 23 percent of them had faced pressure from doctors and nurses to be sterilized.

The rate ranged from 20 percent in Nicaragua to 28 percent in Mexico, according to research by the Mesoamerican Coalition for the Reproductive Rights of Women with HIV and the Women and Health Initiative of Harvard School of Public Health.

The consistency of the rate over a large geographical area pointed to a "systematic pattern" of pressure and coercion, said Harvard School of Public Health research fellow Tamil Kendall.

"It's really unthinkable that women living with HIV are being pressured and forced into sterilization when treatment almost eliminates the possibility of the mother-to-child transmission... and also provides options for safer conception and pregnancy," said Kendall, who presented the research at an international conference on AIDS in Melbourne last week.

"In this day and age there is no reason why women living with HIV can't safely exercise their reproductive rights," she told Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that it was likely the attitude of many health workers reflected the stigma towards HIV in the societies they came from.

Read the rest at Thomson Reuters Foundation

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