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Abstract
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Refers to
Individual and contextual determinants of early access to post-rape care: A retrospective cohort study of 4048 women in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2014 to 2019
Journal of Epidemiology and Population Health, Volume 72, Issue 4, August 2024, Pages 202534
Mugisho-Munkwa Guerschom, Ali Bitenga Alexandre, Andro Armelle
Referred to by
Individual and contextual determinants of early access to post-rape care: A retrospective cohort study of 4048 women in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2014 to 2019
Journal of Epidemiology and Population Health, Volume 72, Issue 4, August 2024, Pages 202534
Mugisho-Munkwa Guerschom, Ali Bitenga Alexandre, Andro Armelle
Preventing sexual violence requires extending knowledge and engaging governments through prevalence surveys that demonstrate the extent of the issue [1]. The Congolese study published in this number of the Journal of Epidemiology and Population Health meets these two requirements [2]. Thirty percent of rape victims living in South Kivu province from 2014 to 2019 were under 18 years old. Only 13 % of rape victims access care before 72 h. The questions facing our global societies in 2024 are: What will these figures imply? How many figures will be needed to make decisions that will better prevent this violence?
More than 10 years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report describing [1]:
Decisions to be taken to prevent such violence: combating traditional social and gender norms linked to male superiority, strengthening legal sanctions against violence, raising educational levels and so on.
The post-rape care that should be provided: psychological support, emergency contraception, treatment and prophylaxis for sexually transmitted infections and so on.
More than 10 years after this report, the resources for preventing and caring for sexual violence are insufficient. This study, carried out in an armed conflict zone, bears witness to the particular nature of sexual violence in these situations, used as a weapon of war, intimidation, and destruction of populations. However, sexual violence does not stop in the host countries of women fleeing such violence. A French study reported in 2023 that nearly 5 % of female asylum seekers were raped during the year in this host country, a rate 18 times higher than the general population of this country [3]. The failure to prevent sexual violence is therefore not specific to countries at war. Host countries fail to protect women fleeing conflict, and inequalities in exposure to such violence persist [4]. There are a number of possible solutions: stabilizing accommodation for women as soon as they arrive, breaking the social isolation and trivialization of the sexual violence they have suffered so as not to normalize any future violence, improving reproductive health education, design multi-professional protocols for the prevention, detection and care of sexual violence, which take into account the social, medico-legal and intercultural issues faced by this population [5]. However, since we obviously still lack the evidence to involve governments and public authorities, these solutions could be studied in future continental studies with a high level of proof.
Language: en |