By The Namibian (WERNER MENGES) 

ONE of the women suing Government based on claims that their child-bearing years were cut short without their informed consent, testified in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday that she had given birth to her seventh child when she was sterilised against her will in the Katutura State Hospital. 

The woman is the third plaintiff to testify before Acting Judge President Elton Hoff in a case in which Government is being sued for millions of dollars.

Government is defending the case. It is claiming that the women all gave written consent to be sterilised before the procedure was carried out. The women admit having signed consent forms, but claim they were not properly informed of the consequences of the consent they were giving.

The three plaintiffs are part of a group of 16 women suing Government after they were sterilised in State hospitals. The case, being heard by Acting Judge President Hoff, is the first batch of these cases to go on trial. The hearing started in June and resumed yesterday, following a postponement of almost three months.

Each of the three plaintiffs is suing Government for N,2 million.

Because the plaintiffs are HIV positive the court has ordered that their identities may not be revealed by the media.

The third plaintiff told the court yesterday that she is now 44 years old. Between 1983 and 2005 she gave birth to seven children. One of these children died at the age of seven months in 2002, which was also the year when she was diagnosed as being HIV positive, she testified.

The plaintiff told the court she is unmarried and making a living selling kapana street food. Her current partner, who is also the father of her last four children, is a married man whose wife lives in northern Namibia, she said. “I stay in a shack. He only comes to visit me when he needs,” she said.

Although she lives in a shack, she said, she has been able to support her children and provide an education for them through her kapana trade. 

She was about three months into her last pregnancy in early 2005 when she got seriously ill and visited a hospital in Windhoek, she related. She said she was in severe pain, and because she was worried that she might die because of the pregnancy, she asked for the pregnancy to be terminated.

After a sonar examination of her unborn baby had been done, she was told that the pregnancy could not be ended, she said.

By October 2005 she went into labour and went to Katutura State Hospital for the delivery of her baby, she said. While experiencing intense labour pains, a nurse arrived where she was, saying: “Meme, meme, skryf, skryf. Tjanga, tjanga.” (“Madam, madam, write, write. Sign, sign.”)

She was then given papers to sign, before being taken to an operating theatre for what turned out to be a caesarian section and the sterilisation procedure, she claims.

The documents she signed are claimed to have been the consent forms in which she agreed in writing that her baby could be delivered by caesarian section and that she could be sterilised.

“I do not know (what it means) because it was not explained to me,” the plaintiff claimed. She said she did not know what was on the paper she was asked to sign.

She also told the court that she does not speak, read or write English.

“Nothing was explained to me,” she claimed. She added that she did not consent to the sterilisation procedure being carried out on her.

Only when she heard nurses talking to each other in the ward where she was being treated after the operation, did she realise that she had been sterilised, she claimed.
The trial continues today.

Dave Smuts, SC, and Natasha Bassingthwaighte are representing the plaintiffs on instructions from the Legal Assistance Centre. Esi Schimming-Chase, instructed by the Government Attorney’s office, is representing Government. 

http://www.namibian.com.na/news/full-story/archive/2010/september/article/mother-of-seven-joins-sterilisation-legal-action/

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