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Women do not speak of domestic violence - WHO
Reuters
2005-11-25

Geneva/London - One in six women worldwide suffers domestic violence - some battered during pregnancy - yet many remain silent about the assaults, according to the World Health Organisation.

In its first global study, the WHO also said physically or sexually abused women were more likely to suffer longer-term health problems, including suicide attempts. The United Nations agency called for changing behaviour through education programmes and training more health workers and police officers to investigate mistreatment.

Women are more at risk from violence involving people they know at home than from strangers in the street. There is a feeling that the home is a safe haven and that pregnancy is a very protected period, but that is not the case, WHO director-general Lee Jong-Wook said.

Domestic violence remains largely hidden.

The Women's Health and Domestic Violence Against Women study is based on interviews with more than 24 000 women in 10 countries, ranging from Japan and Thailand to Ethiopia and Peru.

It paints a harrowing picture of broken bones, bruises, burns, cracked skulls, dislocated jaws, rape and fear. Husbands or intimate partners are the main perpetrators.

Every 18 seconds, somewhere, a woman suffers violence or maltreatment. We must put an end to this shameful practice, said Spanish Health Minister Elena Salgado, president of the WHO's annual health assembly.

Domestic violence can be sparked by dinner being late, not finishing the housework on time, disobeying, or refusing to have sex, the report said. In many cases, women agree that a man is justified in beating his wife under certain circumstances.

In terms of symptoms - pain, dizziness, mental distress, miscarriages - the findings across the 15 urban and rural settings were remarkably consistent, according to Claudia Garcia-Moreno, the study's co-ordinator.

Whether you're a cosmopolitan woman in Brazil or Japan, or a rural woman in Ethiopia or Peru, the association between violence and poor health remains, she said. - Reuters

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