South African Insurance Company Covers HIV Testing, Treatment for Rape Survivors
APM's "Marketplace" on Wednesday profiled a private South African insurance company, called First for Women, that sells policies that provide coverage and benefits for rape survivors in South Africa. Under the policies, a woman who has been raped can have a trained counselor escort her to a hospital where she can receive emergency contraceptives, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and an HIV test. If the woman tests HIV-negative within 72 hours of being raped, she can receive antiretroviral drugs to reduce her risk of contracting the virus, APM reports. "One of the important things was for very many people who get raped in the rural areas, there isn't a chemist around that has medicines for them, there isn't a nearby hospital that they can go to, so a key factor had to be that you could get the medication to that woman fast," Charlene Smith, a South African journalist and rape survivor, said (Wilson, "Marketplace," APM, 2/16).
The complete audio segment is available online in RealPlayer.