The director general of Israel's Ministry of Health Ronni Gamzu told a Knesset committee yesterday that since he ordered HMOs not to give Depo-Provera shots to Ethiopian women without first telling them of other possible methods of birth control. Investigative journalists and Ethiopian women have charged that Jewish Agency-run clinics in Ethiopia and HMOs in Israel routinely gave Ethiopian women Depo-Provera without their knowledge or consent. Other Ethiopian women have claimed that when they were told what Depo-Provera did, they told medical personnel that they did not want the shot. The medical personnel alleged threatened the women and told them that they would not be able to come to Israel unless they allowed the shots to be given.
Ha'aretz reports:
Health Ministry director general Ronni Gamzu on Wednesday said that since January, when he instructed Israel[’s] four main HMOs not to automatically administer Depo-Provera [birth control shots that last for months] to Ethiopian women who request a contraceptive, such treatments have dropped 30 to 40 percent.
Gamzu made his remarks to the Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee.…the figures Gamzu presented Wednesday are preliminary data submitted by the HMOs at the ministry’s request, and the ministry is still reviewing them.
…[T]he figures…strengthen the claim that until now, Ethiopian women were given the shots without any explanation of either the side effects or alternative contraceptive methods.…
Gamzu said that in light of the data, the ministry is considering taking the unusual step of requiring women to sign a consent form before receiving the shots, to help ensure that they first receive the requisite explanations.…
Several MKs voiced suspicions that the shots were given in a deliberate attempt to lower the Ethiopian birthrate, in light of Central Bureau of Statistics data cited in the Knesset research center’s report. This data showed that among women who immigrated from Ethiopia between 2000 and 2010 − i.e., those most likely to have been given Depo-Provera − fertility rates were 38.2 percent lower than the average Israeli fertility rate in 2010 and 40 percent lower than the average rate among women who immigrated from Ethiopia in the 1990s.…
Data from two of the four HMOs, which was compiled by the Knesset research center… show that until [Gamzu’s order was issued], Depo-Provera treatments had been on the rise. At Meuhedet, the number of women receiving the shots rose by a factor of 7.2 between 1998 and 2012, from 56 to 407, with a 62 percent increase recorded from 2010 to 2011 alone. At Leumit, the number rose from just one in 2008 to 521 in 2012.
Clalit and Maccabi, the two largest HMOs, declined to provide data, citing a class-action suit against them on the issue − though that suit also targets Meuhedet. But according to a 2009 study by the feminist organization Isha L’Isha, there was a significant rise in the number of Ethiopian women receiving Depo-Provera at those HMOs as well in 2000-2009.
…[T]he committee asked State Comptroller Joseph Shapira to investigate the use of Depo-Provera in Ethiopian women. Health Minister Yael German, who attended the hearing, also proposed that a parliamentary committee of inquiry be established on the matter.…