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. 2018 Sep 20;18(1):37.
doi: 10.1186/s12914-018-0177-z.

HIV prevention: mapping Mozambican people's views on the acceptability of the widow's sexual cleansing ritual called pita-kufa

Germano Vera Cruz  1 , Aniceto Mateus  2 , Priscilla S Dlamini  3
Affiliations

HIV prevention: mapping Mozambican people's views on the acceptability of the widow's sexual cleansing ritual called pita-kufa

Germano Vera Cruz et al. BMC Int Health Hum Rights. .

Abstract

Background: In Mozambique, the widow is traditionally required to undergo a cleansing ritual called pita-kufa, which generally involves several sessions of unprotected sexual intercourse with the brother of her deceased husband. This ritual may play a role in the spread of HIV and reveals, to some degree, the subordinate position to which women are subjected in Mozambican society. Thus, this study's aim was to map Mozambicans' views on the acceptability of this ritual, given the gender and public health concerns linked to it.

Methods: A total of 359 Mozambicans participated in the study. The data collection instrument consisted of 18 vignettes describing realistic pita-kufa situations, varying as a function of three factors: a widow's willingness or not to perform the ritual, the perceived effectiveness of the ritual, and the risk level of HIV infection linked to the practice. For each pita-kufa situation presented in the vignettes, the participants were asked to rate its acceptability on an 11-point scale. In addition, the participants wrote comments giving their general views on the ritual. A cluster analysis using the K-means procedure was applied to the quantitative raw data to capture different perspectives, and the participants' written comments were subjected to thematic and frequency content analysis.

Results: From the data gathered though the vignettes, three different perspectives were found: total unacceptability (55% of the participants), conditional acceptability (29% of the participants) and unconditional acceptability (16% of the participants). From the data gathered though the participants' written comments, it emerged that they thought that the practice of this ritual should evolve (61%), stop (27%) and be kept as it is (12%).

Conclusion: According to the main results, it seems that a large majority of study participants think that this ritual is outdated and needs to evolve in order to minimize the risk of HIV transmission and respect women's rights.

Keywords: HIV; Sexual ritual; Widow cleansing; women’s rights.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical clearance was obtained from ethical review board of Eduardo Mondlane University. All participants provided written informed consent for data collection and publication prior to data collection. All participants were at least 18 years of age. Data collectors informed participants of their right to end the data collection event at any time or skip any questions. No personally identifiable information was collected.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Patterns of Results Corresponding to the Three Clusters. Note, Mean ratings of the widow’s sexual cleansing ritual acceptability as a function of the risk of HIV infection and the widow’s willingness or unwillingness to undergo the ritual. In each of the panel, the acceptability is on the vertical axis, the three levels of the HIV infection risk are on the horizontal axis, and one of the two lines corresponds to the widow’s willingness while the other corresponds to widow’s unwillingness. Each panel corresponds to one cluster: total unacceptability, conditional acceptability, and unconditional acceptability.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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