Kenya to investigate allegations of forced sterilizations among HIV-positive women

Sep 6 2012

"Kenya has launched an investigation after researchers claimed HIV-positive women were being routinely sterilized without their consent in government hospitals," the Guardian reports. The African Gender and Media Initiative issued a report "based on interviews with 40 women, suggest[ing] the practice was widespread and ongoing," according to the newspaper. "The report also includes examples of coercive tactics used by medical staff to obtain consent -- for instance, threatening to withhold antiretroviral medication or baby milk if the woman did not agree to the procedure," the newspaper writes. "'These allegations are very serious and the Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board is going to investigate them before appropriate action is taken,' Shariff Shahnaz, the director of public health, told the Daily Nation newspaper," the Guardian reports (Mojtehedzadeh, 9/4).