Violent men restricting AIDS care to wives

Marital abuse is preventing Ugandan women and girls from accessing HIV/AIDS testing and treatment services, the international rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), has found. According to a recent report, compiled from a series of interviews with women across the globe, HRW said public health officials sometimes forced HIV-positive women to disclose their status, placing them at increased risk of domestic violence and social exclusion. Hadija Namaganda, an HRW respondent, said her HIV-positive husband had routinely forced her to have unprotected sex with him and beat her viciously, once attacking her so violently that he bit off half her left ear. When he lay dying of AIDS and was too weak to beat her, he ordered his younger brother to do so. HRW has urged all governments, donors and international organisations to address gender equality a central element of HIV/AIDS policy and programmes, and inequity as an abuse in its own right. Access the 'Women's Rights in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS', report: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/21/africa10357.htm