Kiwi helping in horror zones

BY MICHAEL FOX

Kiwi midwife Bronwyn Hale deals with the people and places of this world that most of us would rather not know about; conflict and disaster zones where soldiers use rape and mutilation as a weapon of war.

They are the places where victims have lost their homes and livelihoods. People are fighting for survival. The situations are dire for everyone, but more so for women and children.

On top of the constant terror, horrific injuries, the deaths of family members, a loss of hope and lack of food, they're also subjected to sexual violence beyond the comprehension of most of us in the bottom of the South Pacific.

Ms Hale - a former midwife and now a women's health advisor with Medecins Sans Frontieres - is in New Zealand lecturing on the aid agency's work. Her job has taken her to the coalfaces of international war and disaster zones - areas where, according to MSF figures, sexual crimes against women jump dramatically.

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Ms Hale's lectures have also tied in to today's celebration of International Women's Day, marking the economic, political and social achievements of women.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2007, there were 2785 rape victims, according to Médecins Sans Frontières  figures. After renegade Congolese General Laurent Nkunda reignited war in the later stages of 2008, that almost doubled to 5438 recorded cases.

In the Bosnian War which raged from 1992 to 1995, between 20,000 and 30,000 women were raped. The number was thought to be as high as half a million during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

HIV is rife in such regions, and the rapes can be exceedingly violent. Medical treatment is far from guaranteed. HIV has became a "weapon of war", and a tool of genocide, as soldiers seek to intentionally infect their victims with the deadly virus.

Particularly violent cases of rape had severe consequences. Victims have been left with horrific injuries; severe incontinence, sterility and ostracism.

"Nobody wants them in their village because they smell and probably can't give birth.

"I find those things incredibly sad because with the right medical treatment we can do something about all of those things."

In disaster zones, the pattern is the same.

Following the devastating quake in Haiti, homes and social structures were reduced to rubble.

Everyday tasks such as gathering water from communal taps and collecting firewood, made them more vulnerable, and sexual violence in the embattled country has escalated, Ms Hale says.

This meant aid providers had to consider things like where they put the taps and food stalls and lighting in a bid to protect them.

Last year, MSF provided over 15,000 treatments for sexual violence and almost 49,000 treatments for violence trauma.

When they did manage to treat patients, they were often stopped from doing the follow ups as the war or disaster victims had been displaced and were often on the move.

Ms Hale recounts a trip to a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo where fighting is described as the worst in the world and the most deadly since WWII. Over 5 million people have been killed.

Hales, a French doctor and another Congolese midwife travelled for three hours along the river by boat, and walked an hour inland to get to a village which had been attacked by rebels.

After convincing the village leader they were there to help, they were let in to treat the 15 rape victims.

They organised to return 15 days later to provide the follow-up treatment, only to find the village gone.

"It was too dangerous for them to stay," she said.

Ms Hale said she sometimes felt as though she were butting her head against a brick wall, but saw no other way.

"I guess if I'm honest with you the response has to be 'yes, it's difficult to see a resolution' but it's equally difficult for me to see who else is going to do it."

She remembers the death of a Sudanese woman who was "about 18 and beautiful".

She had been bought in by her husband, a soldier, barely conscious, after he had arrived home to find his wife had been crudely operated on by a local witch doctor in a bid to treat her malaria.

The witch doctor had attempted to bleed the malaria out, and the woman was covered in cuts, inflicted with dirty tools.

Shortly after arriving at the MSF aid station, she had lost consciousness and died two or three days later from either malaria or from tetanus, presumably caught during the botched operation.

If she had received the right, timely medical treatment, she might well have lived and it was these unnecessary deaths which were hard to watch.

"That was devastating for me because I watched everyone's grief ... to watch a whole family grieving like that touched me."

Having worked in long-term MSF projects in Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, her role now is to visit projects all over the world to ensure they're running as well as possible; a job which has taken her to hot spots such as Nigeria, South Sudan and Iran.

Ms Hale said she used to return to New Zealand angry at the apathy shown by Kiwis to the plight of what was happening but had, grown to ignore it.

"Now it's become a much more balanced view. I don't know, maybe it's just time that has achieved that," she said.

She said the situations were so different, with people in disaster zones living amid death and destruction and trying to get their lives back on track and had reconciled that with the settled lives led by people in the developed world.

"If I didn't, I would become a crazy, bitter person not capable of providing the care I need to in either place."

- © Fairfax NZ News