Sharmin Sattar, a nursing instructor at the Dinajpur Nursing Institute, says, “My parents passed away when I was very young. After I finished school, I helped support my sibilings. I then got married and found a job as a nursing instructor. During the course of my job, I came across several cases where women were assaulted and battered by their husbands. I found that women were vulnerable to violence irrespective of their social background or age. The doctors and nurses have, over the years, become insensitive to the plight of the women and are rude to them. This is demeaning to the women who come for treatment. The health personnel look at thee problem of domestic violence as a social phenomenon rather than as a serious health issue. Rape victims, in particular, are treated so badly in hospitals that it if they were physically raped earlier they are mentally raped here.

We cannot overrule the fact that there is a close link between violence, particularly domestic violence, and a woman’s health. Violence impacts a woman’s physical and emotional health and leaves her vulnerable to various infections. It diminishes her productive capacities and forces her in a deeper dependence on her husband or other members of the family.

Everyday, I see how the health care system perpetuates further violence against women. Medical care is biased in favour of men. When patients come seeking medicines, for instance, it is the men who get them. The women (in almost all cases) cannot afford to buy them and when they can they prefer buying medicines for their husbands or children. The men have separate wards while the women and children wards are clubbed together. This is unfortunate as women fall ill more often than men and need more wards and medical attention. Also, women almost never take decisions on the number of children they will have. The irony is that they have no choice in the matter of their own bodies.

As the health care system fails women, I felt I had to do something to address these problems. I have been lobbying for better health care for women, privacy in their wards, emotional support and counselling facilities for rape victims, and more importantly, gender-sensitive training for medical students. I have personally started counselling student nurses under my direct supervision on these issues. I urge them to talk to women patients to make them understand the importance of paying more attention to their own health. I have also instructed my students to counsel pregnant women in particular.

I am fortunate to have an extremely supportive life partner. Not many women are so lucky. If we have a difference of opinion (which we sometimes do), we talk and sort it out. But in many homes it is not talk but beatings that resolve differences. We need to work to end this destructive practice.”