[Picture from same article - copyright irinnews.org,
28/1/2013 – Image Andreas Hackl/IRIN]
28.1.2013. The director of the Ministry of
Health in Israel, Roni Gamzo, has issued a formal directive instructing that
gynaecologists should not inject women with the contraceptive Depo-Provera
without their knowledge or consent.
The directive, issued last week, comes
after around 30 Ethiopian Jews who had emigrated to Israel said they had been
told that they would not be allowed into the country without receiving the
contraceptive drug.
Within Israel, Ethiopian Jews make up the
majority of those given the drug, according to a report published in 2010 by
Isha le'Isha, a women’s rights organization; 57 percent of women who had
received the drug in Israel are Ethiopian Jews, although they account for less
than 2 percent of the overall population.
“We believe it is a method of reducing the
number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor,” Hedva Eyal, the
author of the report, told IRIN. “It is indeed the first time that the state
actually acknowledged that this procedure of injecting immigrant women with
this drug, when they do not know the side effects and are given no other
choice, is wrong.”
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