Figure 5.2 In Egypt, doctors, as opposed to other health personnel, undertake most FGM/C procedures Among girls who have undergone FGM/C (as reported by their mothers), percentage who have been cut, by the type of health personnel performing the procedure
Doctor
Nurse/midwife/other health worker Notes: This figure includes only countries where at least 5 per cent of daughters are cut by a health professional. Data for Egypt refer to all girls aged 0 to 17 who have undergone FGM/C. Data for Nigeria and Sudan refer to all girls aged 0 to 14 who have undergone FGM/C. Data for Iraq and Yemen refer to ever-married girls and women aged 15 to 49 with at least one living daughter who has undergone FGM/C. For all other countries, data refer to the most recently cut daughter among mothers aged 15 to 49 with at least one living daughter who has undergone FGM/C. Due to rounding, the data presented in this graph are slightly different from the numbers that appear in Figure 5.1. Country names are coloured according to prevalence level groupings, as explained in Box 4.4 on page 27. Sources: DHS, MICS and SHHS, 1997-2011.
Egypt Kenya Nigeria Yemen Djibouti Guinea Chad Sudan Iraq Ghana 0
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Settings for the procedure and materials used A few older surveys asked mothers about other aspects of the procedure performed on their daughters, such as the site where the cutting took place, the instrument used and whether some sort of anaesthetic was administered. With regard to the site, most mothers reported that their daughters were cut at home (see Table 5.1). In Egypt, about a third of the procedures took place at a doctor’s office, hospital or clinic. However, a comparison of this figure with the proportion of daughters cut by medical personnel (61 per cent in 2000) indicates that around half of the procedures for which medical personnel were responsible took place outside a clinical setting, more specifically in the home. In most cases, a blade or razor was used for cutting in
50
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Egypt, and one in four daughters underwent the procedure without an anaesthetic of any kind. It is plausible to expect this proportion to be much higher in countries where the practice is mostly performed by traditional circumcisers rather than medical personnel.
Type of FGM/C performed Table 5.2 shows the different types of FGM/C performed among daughters.100 Across a majority of countries for which data are available, mothers report that most daughters have had their genitalia cut, with some flesh removed. More than one in five daughters have undergone the most invasive form of FGM/C (involving the sewing of genitalia) in Somalia, Eritrea, Niger, Djibouti and Senegal. In at least 10 per cent of cases in Sierra Leone, Mauritania and Mali, the type of
When and how is FGM/C performed? 45