Ipas > Ipas Mexico gives overview on sexual violence at WHO workshop

Ipas Mexico gives overview on sexual violence at WHO workshop

August 28, 2003

Ipas Mexico Country Director Nadine Gasman

At the request of Mexican Ministry of Health, Ipas Mexico Country Director Nadine Gasman recently presented an overview of sexual violence in Mexico to more than 250 public-health experts, academics and government leaders, as part of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) introduction of a new report on the health impacts of violence.

Together with the Mexican Ministry of Health, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) – which focuses on the Latin American and Caribbean region -- organized the July 10 symposium in Mexico City to call government and community leaders’ attention to the findings of WHO’s first “World Report on Violence and Health.” Published in 2002, the report compiles available data on numerous forms of violence and their health, economic and social effects. WHO officials are organizing a series of meeting around the world to highlight the report’s recommendations of actions to prevent and address violence at the local, national and international levels.

Gasman’s selection to present the report’s chapter on sexual violence, and to examine the issue in the Mexican context, reflects Ipas Mexico’s position as a leading authority on sexual violence in Mexico. During the last year, Ipas has begun working with the federal Ministry of Health’s Women and Health program to develop a national model of comprehensive care for female victims of domestic and sexual violence based on a model that Ipas Mexico developed, refined and introduced in the Federal District and the states of Mexico , Hidalgo and Michoacán.

“The fact that WHO devoted a separate chapter of its report to sexual violence indicates important progress in addressing this problem,” Gasman said. “Too often sexual violence is invisible, and that invisibility hinders women’s and children’s ability to get services they need.”

WHO estimates that one in four women has experienced violence from an intimate partner and reports that one-third of adolescents say their first sexual experience was forced. In Mexico, Gasman noted in her presentation, it is estimated that only one in 10 victims of sexual violence reports it. Yet in the last decade, she added, about four case of rape were reported every day in Mexico City alone.

Sexual violence has significant, and often long-lasting, physical and mental health consequences, as well as economic repercussions. For example, victims of sexual violence are at increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, and unwanted pregnancy. Gasman said that a study of clients from one health center in Mexico City showed that 11 percent of women who were raped became pregnant as a result.

Gasman stressed that rape victims often have great difficulty accessing legal abortion when they decide to terminate pregnancies that result from rape – even though rape is an indication for legal abortion in all 31 Mexican states and the Federal District.

The comprehensive-care model that Ipas Mexico is developing with the federal Ministry of Health consists of legal advice, psychological support and medical care for survivors of violence. To date more than 3,400 health, legal and social service providers have been introduced to the model, and several hundred health care providers have been trained in provision of high-quality, comprehensive care – including legal abortion – for victims of sexual violence.

At the July 10 meeting, Gasman called for a coordinated, multi-sectoral effort to prevent and address the consequences of sexual violence, and especially for cooperation between the health and judicial sectors. “Reducing violence is a realistic goal if it becomes part of every person’s, family’s, community’s, institution’s and country’s agenda,” she said.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258