FGM Guidelines Urge Physicians To Treat Practice As Abuse Not 'Cultural' Issue

During the four days Sarian Kamara spent in labor with her eldest daughter at a London hospital, doctors and nurses filtered in and out of the delivery room and whispered among one another as they peered at her circumcised vagina. At the time, Kamara, 39, had no idea that her excruciating delivery was linked to the fact that she had been subjected to female genital mutilation as a young girl in Sierra Leone. As Kamara lay in pain, she feared that the African practitioners had cursed her because of her “bad” behavior. But as the doctors prepared to perform a C-section, a midwife examined Kamara, and asked her questions about her past, something none of the medical professionals had. Kamara opened up about having been cut and the midwife realized that by making an incision near her anus, Kamara could give birth to her daughter vaginally. “Nobody asked me any questions,” Kamara, who now campaigns against FGM in London, told The Huffington Post of how the doctors and nurses tiptoed around the issue. “They didn’t want to ‘offend’ me around this cultural issue.” To better educate healthcare workers about how to identify victims of female genital mutilation, and effectively engage with such patients, the World Health Organization released its first guidelines on the topic last Monday during the Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen. The goal is to urge medical professionals to treat the issue as abuse, not a protected tradition...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news