Local hospital helps women suffering the consequences of FGM скачать в хорошем качестве

Local hospital helps women suffering the consequences of FGM

(6 Feb 2018) LEADIN: Campaigners across the world are marking the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM (6 February). In Ethiopia, as many as three quarters of women are living with the painful and sometimes life-threatening daily reality of genital mutilation, and one local hospital is doing its best to help them. STORYLINE: Bekarredar village is deep in the desert of Ethiopia's Afar region. Here, life is hard and many traditional practices have hardly changed for generations. One of these is female genital mutilation (FGM). Kedija, who's now 25, had her genitals cut when she was just seven days old. She was subjected to a practice known as infibulation, where the external genetalia are removed and the vagina is sewn up. As a result, Kedija has been forced to cope with a lifetime of pain and sexual and renal problems. She says she doesn't want to be shown on camera. "It is hard to explain the problems female genital mutilation created in my life. The pain and suffering begins in childhood and gets worse as you get older," she says. "Because I was cut when I was seven days old, I was unable to hold my urine for long. And when I must go, I have to endure an excruciating burning sensation. I isolated myself from socializing because of that. Later when my menstruation began, because the opening was too tiny, the pain worsened even more. And after I got married it was painful to have sexual intercourse with my husband. Three childbirths later I was diagnosed with near-fatal renal complications. I had to put an end to my sex life and eventually my marriage." She got married at 14 and when she gave birth to a baby girl a year later, simple daily chores proved to be extremely strenuous. Over the next 20 months, as a result of peer and family pressure, she gave birth to two more children. Her frail body wasn't able to recover from the repeated trauma, causing the near-fatal renal problems that resulted in hospitalisation. Sadly, Kedija's story is not unusual. Three quarters of Ethiopian women and girls have undergone irreversible female genital mutilation, according to the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey published in 2016. And in mainly rural Afar, the prevalence of this ancient tradition is even higher: nine in ten women and girls have been subjected to FGM, most before celebrating their first birthdays.    Addu Abdala Dubba used to be one of the women who performed circumcisions. She's now a midwife. She sharpens a small blade against a steel rod to demonstrate how she used to prepare for the task. "When I used to cut girls' genitals using this blade, I always made sure it is very sharp, like this. Otherwise the girls could go through severe physical pain," she says. "There were even times when I performed consecutive cuttings in one day with this one blade. But I carefully sanitized it after each circumcision by heating it in a fire or dipping it in hot water to avoid infection." Addu Abdala Dubba says the job of circumcising girls used to give her a sense of purpose in life. She believed she was doing what was necessary to help women preserve their virginity and marital faithfulness - a necessary part of maintaining a family's honour.   The practice is usually carried out regardless of the preference of the girls and women themselves. In 2013, UNICEF estimated that there were 23.8 million women and girls in Ethiopia who had undergone FGM. That same year, 10 ten villages declared that they would stop carrying out FGM, but only two were in Afar region, and, five years later, virtually no progress has been registered. Now, she says, enough is enough. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...