OpenForum – a blog by the Health and Human Rights community

A health scandal swept the South American nation of Chile in November 2008, as the new health minister, Alvaro Erazo, disclosed that the public health system and private sector services had failed to notify nearly 2,000 citizens of their HIV-positive status, according to a New York Times report.

Not only does Chile face the risk of further infections due to the victims of this notification lag, but also, as the dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Chile estimated, about 40,000 additional Chileans may not know they are infected with HIV. AIDS advocacy groups Vivo Positivo and Asosida issued a joint statement condemning the notification failure, calling it, “a flagrant violation of human rights and of the right to life” (Times). The magnitude of this problem in Chile highlights the oft-ignored dysfunction of health organizations even in countries that are not among the hemisphere’s poorest. Moreover, the Chilean Ministry of Health’s National AIDS Commission estimates that by 2010 AIDS will be the nation’s leading cause of death. It is time that the world health community and the media, which focuses more often than not on the problems of more devastated or poverty-stricken countries, recognize that Chile may be facing an endemic AIDS crisis in the coming years.

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Imagine waking up after giving birth to your first child, to discover that, despite plans for a large family, you have been sterilized without consent by the doctors whom you trusted with your life. According to an international suit filed by an HIV-positive woman against the Chilean government, this exact scenario occurred when the 27 year-old woman was forcibly sterilized in a state hospital.

The suit highlights the fact that the hospital operated on the woman because of her HIV status, even though the possibility of transmitting the virus to a fetus or newborn can be reduced to less than 2% with proper intervention. Moreover, the case illustrates the violations of reproductive rights frequently suffered by women living with HIV, who may be forced to have abortions against their will or are even excluded from healthcare services. A countrywide study done by Vivo Positivo, a Chilean HIV/AIDS advocacy group, found that 41.9% of HIV-positive women who had been sterilized had done so under pressure from doctors or even without consent. How such a patent violation of human rights in one country could be occurring without international outrage is startling; yet, the Human Rights Watch has documented similar cases throughout the world. Read more