|
|
 |
HIV/AIDS crisis demands reproductive health care in Africa
Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (New York), June 4, 2002.
|
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has spurred significant advances in reproductive health policies across Africa, however, governments do not allocate sufficient legal and financial resources to ensure that the policies are effective, according to a report launched today by advocates from seven African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, and the U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP). The report is based on two years of collaborative research and analysis of laws and policies related to women's reproductive lives.
"Unlike the rest of the world, women in Sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV/AIDS at double and triple the rates of men," said Katherine Hall Martinez, acting director of CRLP's international program. "We have seen a dramatic increase in policies that intend to improve women's reproductive health and rights but governments must take the next step to safeguard these policies with laws and programmatic funding in order to start saving lives."
The 175-page report: Women of the World: Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives, Anglophone Africa Progess Report 2001, is an extensive review of developments that occurred since CRLP's groundbreaking 1997 study, which examined the laws and policies related to women's reproductive health and rights in the same seven African countries.
Critical findings from the Progress Report include:
· Minimal contraceptive use and acceptance, especially of condoms. In southern Africa, where HIV rates are highest, condom use is lowest.
Similarly, in Ghana, only 3% of women and 7% of men have ever used a condom to prevent sexually transmitted infections.
· Female circumcision/female genital mutilation (FC/FGM), despite many governments' official objections, remains largely legal. Nigeria's policy aims to reduce by half the incidence of FC/FGM by 2005, but shies away from making the practice a crime. Ethiopia, where 73% of women have undergone some form of FC/FGM, has no explicit law or policy prohibiting the practice.
· Movement toward liberalizing abortion has gained momentum throughout the region including in Kenya and Nigeria, which have the most restrictive bans.
Despite this, Kenyan adolescents make up 60% of cases involving unsafe abortion complications. In Ethiopia, 54% of all obstetric deaths are attributed to clandestine, unsafe abortions. High maternal mortality rates in nearly all seven countries is attributed to unsafe abortion.
The June 5-7 meeting of advocates is being hosted in Ghana by the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA)-Ghana, an organization which specializes in providing legal aid services to women and children.
To download or order copies of the report, see CRLP's website at www.crlp.org.
The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) is a non-profit legal advocacy organization dedicated to promoting and defending women's reproductive rights worldwide. |
| Was this article helpful to you? |
 ?0%???? ?0%
|
|
Back
|
|
|
|
