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IBEKWE         OGOCHUKWU               ALEXANDER
IBEKWE OGOCHUKWU ALEXANDER
Disability, Sex and Woman - a triple taboo
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Sexuality is still a taboo topic in many societies - and the taboo is even greater for people with disabilities. Parents and relatives believe that a woman with disability should not engage in sex. Some sleep with any man, to get away from their parents. Others are taken advantage of by men, playing on the women's need to be wanted and loved. Many are raped precisely because of their vulnerability: their disability may make it difficult for them to get away or fight off attackers or, in the case of mental impairment, to understand what is happening.

Research shows that almost 90 per cent of disabled women experience sexual abuse, exploitation and violence from the very people who are supposed to be helping them - care-givers, close relatives and family members. Sexual partners are also often abusive them because people with disability feel they have fewer chances of a relationship, they tend to stay with a partner even if he is violent or takes many other partners.
What is acceptable in the community is for a disabled person to marry another disabled person so that together they share their curse", says a disabled local counselor in Uganda . To add to the already harrowing problems of discrimination and abuse in sexual matters comes the risk of HIV and AIDS. If you are raped, or have little choice in sexual partners, or have no power in a relationship - which is the experience of huge numbers of people with disability - you run a greatly increased risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection including HIV.

Abusers may also deludedly believe the myth that sex with disabled women cures AIDS, or perhaps think that disabled women don't have sex and therefore will not be infected with HIV. Disabled people are less likely than others to be informed about HIV and AIDS, even in societies such as Nigeria where public information campaigns are widespread. Because they are seen as unlikely to have sex they often miss out on traditional sex education; because they are often illiterate, they may not be able to read publicity material; because they are often poor they may lack access to (or may be unable to hear or watch) radio and TV. It's hard enough for men; a disabled man approached a village health team for a packet of condoms and was asked, "What do you want to do with them? Has someone sent you for them?" Rather than risk further mockery and humiliation, the man chose to do without a condom. The difficulty experienced by a man in such circumstances can usually be multiplied many times for a woman. If someone with a disability becomes HIV-positive, discrimination triples. Disabled women living with HIV face double discrimination, First and foremost as women, secondly as women with disabilities. It is still worse if a woman has disability and is HIV positive. This means this person is being discriminated against three times over HIV and AIDS organisation are rarely willing to work with people with disabilities. There is no readily available information in Braille or sign language at Voluntary Testing Centers. No provision is made for the blind to read the instructions on condoms. To avoid yet further hostility, people with disabilities who also have AIDS frequently avoid getting treatment, including antiretroviral (ARV). A disable girl told me that she choose to suffer and die quietly than come out and expose herself to humiliation and stigma. People with disabilities were some times excluded from the country's national HIV/AIDS policy, reinforcing the perception that they were social misfits. There is need for new approach. It is a bleak picture, and of enormous importance, both for the individuals concerned but also for international efforts to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. Given that an estimated 10 per cent of the world's citizens are disabled, the AIDS crisis cannot be addressed successfully unless individuals with disability are routinely included in all AIDS outreach efforts.

April 24, 2008 | 9:34 AM Comments  0 comments

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