Domestic violence is major health problem for women globally, says U.N

Women who are abused by a partner face a similar legacy of health problems whether they live in a modern city in the industrialized world or a traditional village in a developing country, the first global study on domestic violence has found. In interviews with 24,000 women in 10 countries, researchers found that while there are wide variations in the proportion of women experiencing physical and sexual violence at the hands of their partners, those who have been a victim of it are about twice as likely as those who haven't been to suffer ill health, and the effect seems to persist long after the violence has stopped.

The study, conducted by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and PATH, a global health organization, and released Thursday, is a landmark, said former U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.

"We don't actually know, unless we have studies like this, how serious and pervasive violence by intimate partners really is," said Robinson, who was not connected with the research. "For the first time, this study has used consistent means to measure violence across countries, so that we can now reasonably compare."

"It tells a story that unfortunately is universal. It tells the story of the fact that violence by intimate partners is one of the most serious challenges to women's health," she said.

Countries included in the study were: Brazil, Ethiopia, Japan, Namibia, Peru, Samoa, Serbia and Montenegro, Thailand, Bangladesh and Tanzania.

Countries in North America and Europe were not included in the study because earlier studies had already examined the situation there. In the WHO study, rates varied between 15 percent of women having been a victim of domestic violence during their lifetimes in Japan to 71 percent in Ethiopia.

Previous research has found rates of about 20 percent in the United States and Sweden and 23 percent in Canada and Britain, said one of the researchers, Lori Heise of PATH.

One difference noticed between rich and poor women was that, even though the lifetime risk of abuse was similar between many countries, women in rich countries were less likely to be suffering abuse currently than women in poor countries.

The percentage of women who had been physically or sexually attacked by their partners in the preceding year was 4 percent in Japan and Serbia, compared with between 30 percent and 54 percent in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Tanzania.

"There are lots of ways you can interpret that. It might be that there's less violence in more industrialized settings now, but it also suggests that women in richer countries are able to get out of relationships," Heise said.

The study found that the health impact of domestic violence went well beyond injuries.

Women who had experienced physical or sexual violence by a partner at some point during their lives were more likely to report poor general health at the time of the interview, the study found.

They were more likely to have pain, dizziness, gynecological conditions and mental health problems. They were more likely to have considered or attempted suicide and they were more likely to have had a miscarriage or an induced abortion, said the study's coordinator, Dr. Claudia Garcia-Moreno of the World Health Organization, reports the AP. I.L.