TANZANIA: Sexual abuse, poverty puts disabled at high HIV risk

Dar Es Salaam, 18 May 2006 (PlusNews) - AIDS activists in Tanzania are becoming increasingly concerned about rising HIV/AIDS among mentally and physically disabled people, a group generally perceived to be at lower risk of contracting the virus.

"Infections among disabled women have shot up astonishingly in recent months and we attribute this to their physical inability to ward off sexual attackers," said Dr Semkuya, who heads the natal section of the state-run Mwananyamala Hospital in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

"Some disabled women are lured into unprotected sex by partners who presume them to be in the low-risk group. Mentally sick women are raped, and we only discover this when they are pregnant and brought to antenatal clinics by the relations," he added.

Semkuya said between two and four disabled pregnant women were found to be HIV-positive every month at the clinic, but noted that although many were raped, extreme poverty forced others to have sex as a means of economic survival.

A senior official of the Tanzania Association of the Disabled, Philemon Rujwahula, told delegates from Ethiopia, Ghana and Uganda at a recent international conference in Dar es Salaam that the perception that people with disabilities were "safe" was encouraging unprotected sex with people who had physical or mental health problems.

He said Tanzania's national HIV/AIDS policy excluded people with disabilities, reinforcing the perception that they were social misfits. He called for new approaches to protect the disabled.

"What we have diagnosed is just the tip of the iceberg. Most handicapped people who are sexually abused never make it to the hospital because they already are stigmatised and handicapped by their very nature of being disabled, and when women conceive and contract HIV/AIDS, their social status becomes worse," Semkuya said.

Mpendwa Chihimba, chairperson of Women Fighting AIDS in Tanzania, a local nongovernmental organisation, acknowledged the magnitude of the problem.

"There used to be few and isolated cases in the past, but the frequency with which it is happening is alarming, and complicates the strategies the country has put in place to combat HIV/AIDS," she said. "It is traumatising to see a mentally sick woman pregnant - it is heartbreaking to hear that an expectant woman has also been diagnosed HIV-positive."

Chihimba said the problem called for a new policy to address the special needs of disabled people living with the HI virus.

"This is a challenge to the government and society: to address the physiological and health needs of the disabled, or else their right to life will be perpetually under threat as result of sexual exploitation and abuse," she said.

Theme (s): Care/Treatment - PlusNews,

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]