Source: The Star
UN HIV-Aids wants to be enjoined in a case challenging forced sterilisation of a woman living with HIV.
In court documents, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV-Aids secretari says the case concerns a subject at the core of UNAids' mandate.
It cites human rights and public health norms and principles relating to non-discrimination, security, privacy, autonomy and informed consent.
It says the case also concerns prohibition of coercion in access to HIV and sexual reproductive health services for women living with HIV.
UNAids says if it is allowed to be enjoined as a friend of the court, it will not engage in the parties' submissions. Instead, it will develop its own submissions along international public health and human rights standards relevant to the suit.
The woman has sued Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia, Marura Maternity and Nursing Home and Nairobi Health executive.
She wants the court to declare that it is the right of women living with HIV to have equal access to reproductive health rights, including the right to freely and voluntarily determine if, when and how often to bear children. The woman says she underwent bilateral tubal ligation without her consent at Marura Maternity and Nursing Home. She says the procedure was done without her consent. The woman says the procedure was unconstitutional and violated her reproductive health rights. She says in March 2006 when she was pregnant she tested positive for HIV at Kariobangi Health Centre.
The woman says she later went for a follow up test at Baba Dogo Health Centre where the results confirmed she was HIV positive.
During subsequent visits to the Baba Dogo Health Centre, she was advised by a nurse that due to her health and HIV status, it was wise not to have any more children, she says.
The woman was told having more children would compromise her health and could cause her death, she says. After giving birth to a baby boy, the woman tried to conceive again in June 2010, but failed. She visited a free medical camp in Mathare where a doctor told her that her tubes were blocked because they had been ligated. Justice Mumbi Ngugi will mention the case on July 29.