How medical professionals should treat victims of female genital mutilation- World Health Organisation

The World Health Organization today released its first-ever guidelines on how medical professionals should treat victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), hoping to ease the terrible suffering caused by the widely condemned practice.


Female genital mutilation (FGM) describes all procedures that involve the partial or total removal of external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. FGM has no health benefits, can cause grave harm, and violates the rights of girls and women.

Procedures can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, and death. FGM can also result in complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.

The UN health agency estimates that 200 million women and girls have been subjected to FGM worldwide.

Victims are left to cope with a range of consequences from bleeding and pain while urinating, extreme discomfort during sex, fatal complications in childbirth and deep psychological trauma.

FGM is most prevalent in Africa — where it is practiced in some 30 countries despite widespread criminalisation — as well as pockets of Asia and the Middle East.

Part of the statement reads:

Health workers across the world now need to be prepared to provide care to girls and women who have undergone FGM. But, health workers are often unaware of the many negative health consequences of FGM and many remain inadequately trained to recognize and treat them properly. As a result, many women may suffer needlessly from physical and mental health consequences due to FGM.

“Health workers have a crucial role in helping address this global health issue. They must know how to recognize and tackle health complications of FGM,” says Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant Director General. “Access to the right information and good training can help prevent new cases and ensure that the millions of women who have undergone FGM get the help they need.”

Since 1997, there have been growing international efforts to stop FGM. These include research, work within communities, revised legal frameworks and growing political support to end the practice, as well as international monitoring bodies and resolutions that condemn it. In 2007, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) initiated the Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting to accelerate the abandonment of the practice.

The WHO guidelines build and contribute to these efforts, underlining the recognition that action must be taken across sectors to stop the practice and help those who are living with its consequences.

The recommendations focus on preventing and treating obstetric complications; treatment for depression and anxiety disorders; attention to female sexual health such as counselling, and the provision of information and education.

The guidelines also warn against the so called “medicalization” of FGM, for example when parents ask health providers to conduct FGM because they think it will be less harmful.

“It is critical that health workers do not themselves unwittingly perpetuate this harmful practice,” adds Dr Lale Say, WHO Coordinator, Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO.

While doctors in those regions have a poor track record of treating victims, WHO stressed that global migration had increasingly brought the problem to the West, where medical professionals have also been ill-prepared to respond.

“Health workers are often unaware of the many negative health consequences of FGM and many remain inadequately trained to recognise and treat them properly,” WHO said in the statement.

Victims therefore “may suffer needlessly”, it added.


WHO recommends that health workers perform deinfibulation, a surgical procedure to re-open the vagina, in order to facilitate childbirth.