However, campaigners caution that actual figures are likely to be higher. Kenya estimates that FGM rates fell by more than half "from 38 percent in 1998 to 15 percent in 2022". Medicalised FGM - as it is known - is defended by practitioners and communities alike as a "safe" way to preserve the custom, despite risks to the victim's physical, psychological and sexual health.Īccording to a 2021 report by UNICEF, medicalised FGM is growing in Egypt, Sudan, Guinea and Kenya, where it threatens to undo progress made by the East African nation in stamping out the tradition, which involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris. When Kenya banned FGM in 2011, few expected that the practice - traditionally performed in public with pomp and ceremony - would migrate to backroom clinics and private homes, with nurses and pharmacists doing the procedure underground. ![]() ![]() no one told me it would cause so many problems," Omwenga, now 35, recalled. As Edinah Nyasuguta Omwenga fought for her life after developing complications during childbirth, she overheard doctors in the Kenyan hospital describe her condition as a textbook example of the damaging - even deadly - effects of genital mutilation.īut unlike thousands of girls across East Africa, Omwenga underwent female genital mutilation (FGM) in a hospital, at the hands of a health worker - part of a worrying trend keeping the illegal practice alive.
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