WUNRN
OPERATION GIVES FGM VICTIMS HOPE ON
RECONSTRUCTION
By Olivia Sterns
For CNN
LONDON,
England (CNN)
-- Every day thousands of girls endure forced circumcision. It's a
controversial cultural tradition common in parts of Africa, South America,
Middle East and Asia and that regularly results in infection and even death.
Young girls like this one in Niger are
often forced into circumcision by their families.
The health
dangers involved in this procedure, also known as female genital mutilation
(FGM), are increasingly well-known and have lead to international efforts to
ban the practice.
FGM is also the topic of the forthcoming
film "Desert Flower," the true story of Somalian supermodel Waris
Dirie.
The film, released later this month, tells
the story of Dirie and her struggle with her own
circumcision at the age of five. A former Bond Girl, Dirie has become a leading
voice campaigning against FGM.
As traumatic as the physical consequences
may be, victims say severe psychological and sexual problems also often develop
from FGM that deserve attention too.
One Senegalese woman who was cut as a young
girl describes living with FGM as a "wound that tortures me everyday of my
life."
But a new treatment pioneered by a French
doctor, Pierre Foldes, offers hope for victims of this practice.
Dr. Foldes began working with victims of
female circumcision almost 30 years ago while volunteering in Burkina Faso.
"I met a population of women suffering
from mutilation. Some of them asked me if I could fix things that were
painful," he explained, referring to scar tissue that frequently develops
over the clitoris.
"When I came back to France I realized
there was absolutely no data on this, no technique."
Since then
Foldes has developed a simple reconstructive procedure that removes the painful
tissue and actually reconstructs the clitoris by cutting the ligaments to expose
the original root.
After six to eight weeks, he says the area
begins to appear normal. After six months feeling begins to come back.
"The results are getting better and
better," Foldes told CNN. "72 to 75 percent [of patients] are back to
normal sexuality after 18 months.
"We are working very hard on the
evolution of the program and are involved in treating patients for up to two
years," said Foldes, who currently operates on 80-100 women each month at
a hospital outside Paris.
"The surgical procedure is only a
small part of the whole problem. We have a whole team with psychologists that
follow up with patients for months."
Dr. Foldes estimates he has operated on
more than 3,000 women at his hospital in France. Because female genital
mutilation is a crime in France, Dr. Foldes was able to get the French public
health system to reimburse the cost of the operation and now roughly 70 percent
of his patients receive treatment for free.
"It's like a rape," Foldes says,
comparing the brutality and trauma involved in female circumcision. "It's
very important to deal with the aggression and emotions to progressively get
back to normal sexuality."
Over the years Foldes says has encountered
some steep resistance against his work and has even received multiple death
threats.
According to him, the threats "are
coming from radical Islamic people," and that more than once men have come
to his office with knives, but he will not be deterred.
An estimated 130 million women have
undergone female circumcision. The procedure is typically performed in
unsanitary conditions and often results in infections and fistula, an open
wound that can develop in victims of FGM between the vagina and the anus after
a failed childbirth.
Increasingly
international organizations and governments are working to ban FGM, despite
protests from religious and cultural groups hoping to defend the practice.
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