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.

More links below the fold.

Global Health Reporting: Chile HIV/AIDS

Number of Chileans living with AIDS (Graph)

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.

For example, the European Roma Rights Centre has reported on a policy of forced sterilization of Roma women, perpetrated by Czech doctors starting in 1973. Earlier this year 70 sterilized women publicly accused state-run hospitals of performing sterilizations without consent throughout the past 15 years, often like in the Chile case, directly before or after a birth. “In Czech and Slovak societies, Roma are looked down upon, are thought to have too many children, are viewed as uneducated and lazy, so therefore their reproductive rights are relegated to the bottom of the barrel,” explained Kumar Vishwanathan a supporter of Roma rights and a social worker in Ostrava. While in Chile the case centered on the reproductive rights of HIV sufferers, the Roma sterilizations were based on social prejudice and a desire to eliminate so-called “undesirables,” said Claude Cahn, program director at the European Roma Rights Center in Budapest. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has urged the Czech government to provide on-going training in patient rights for health workers, as well as to provide compensation for victims of forced sterilization. However, to date, “no Romani woman victimized by coerced sterilization practices has received an apology for her suffering from her government in Czech Republic, Hungary or Slovakia,” reports the Roma Rights Network.

The Chilean government has responded with a remarkably similar attitude, as neither the Ministry of Health nor the Chilean courts found that the sterilization was a violation of the woman’s human rights, merely a manifestation of the rampant discrimination against individuals living with HIV/AIDS in Chile. The media attention given to the suit provides a crucial opportunity for the Chilean government and citizens to reconsider the rights of HIV-positive men and women. Nevertheless, it is critical that the international community recognizes this case for what it is: a violation of the human right to informed medical treatment.

See also:

Center for Reproductive Rights

Vivo Positivo Reports on the Law Suit (Spanish)

Campaign on Coerced Sterilization