Legal knowledge, needs, and assistance seeking among HIV positive and negative women in Umlazi, South Africa

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Creator
  • Hill, Lauren M
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Health Behavior
  • Maman, Suzanne
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Health Behavior
  • Holness, David
    • Other Affiliation: University of KwaZulu-Natal Law Clinic, Durban, South Africa
  • Moodley, Dhayendre
    • Other Affiliation: Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Abstract
  • Background The rights of women and people living with HIV (PLHIV) are protected under South African law, yet there is a gap in the application of these laws. While there are numerous systemic and social barriers to women's and PLHIV's exercise of their legal rights and rights to access social services, there has been little effort to document these barriers as well as legal needs and knowledge in this context. Methods 1480 HIV-positive and HIV-negative women recruited from an antenatal clinic in Umlazi Township completed a questionnaire on legal knowledge, experience of legal issues, assistance seeking for legal issues, and barriers to seeking assistance. We compared the legal knowledge and experience of legal issues of HIV-positive and HIV-negative women, and described assistance seeking and barriers to assistance seeking among all women. Results Both HIV-positive and HIV-negative women had high levels of knowledge of their legal rights. There were few important differences in legal knowledge and experience of legal issues by HIV status. The most common legal issues women experienced were difficulty obtaining employment (11 %) and identification documents (7 %). A minority of women who had ever experienced a legal issue had sought assistance for this issue (38 %), and half (50 %) of assistance sought was from informal sources such as family and friends. Women cited lack of time and government bureaucracy as the major barriers to seeking assistance. Conclusions These results indicate few differences in legal knowledge and needs between HIV-positive and HIV-negative women in this context, but rather legal needs common among women of reproductive age. Legal knowledge may be a less important barrier to seeking assistance for legal issues than time, convenience, and cost. Expanding the power of customary courts to address routine legal issues, encouragement of pro bono legal assistance, and introduction of legal navigators could help to address these barriers.
Date of publication
DOI
Identifier
Resource type
  • Article
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Rights holder
  • Hill et al.
Journal title
  • BMC International Health and Human Rights
Journal volume
  • 16
Journal issue
  • 1
Page start
  • 3
Language
  • English
Bibliographic citation
  • BMC International Health and Human Rights. 2016 Jan 22;16(1):3
Publisher
  • BioMed Central

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details 12914_2016_article_77.pdf 2019-05-07 Public Download