April 04, 2008	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 26, 1429

PARIS: Injuries inflicted to women by violent male partners extends well beyond the short term, according to a 10-nation survey of domestic violence released.

The World Health Organi-sation (WHO) probe found that physical and sexual abuse routinely resulted in troubled or aborted pregnancies, gynaecological or gastrointestinal disorders and various forms of chronic pain.

In eight of the 15 urban and rural areas it examined, more than one in seven women subjected to domestic violence said they had been seriously injured at least five times by their partners.

Not only the body is scarred by such violence, said the study, led by Claudia Garcia-Moreno of the WHO and published in the British medical weekly The Lancet.

Consequences also included depression, anxiety, phobias and substance abuse, confirming that the effects of violence can last long.

Women who had been physically or sexually abused were three times likelier to have had suicidal thoughts, and four times likelier to have attempted at least once to take their own lives.

Most previous studies have been national in scope, and focused primarily on Europe and North America, he noted.

The World Health Organi-sation investigation supports previous research showing that the problem is especially acute in certain parts of the world, notably in the Middle East and east Asia.

The percentage of the more than 24,000 women canvassed who reported having been physically injured by the men in their lives range from a low of 19 per cent in rural Ethiopia to a high of 55 per cent in the countryside of Peru.

Other areas on the low end of the male violence spectrum include rural and urban Bangladesh (24.8 and 26.7 per cent) and urban Japan (26.6 per cent), while countries in which women suffered the most included Thailand and Brazil, in both rural and city settings.

The other countries included in the study were Namibia, Samoa, Serbia, Montenegro and Tanzania.—AFP