What you don't know about Female Genital Mutilation

GRF
Feb 6, 2019
2 min read

According to Unicef study, at least 200 million girls globally have undergone Female Genital Mutilation.

Little girls thrive on aspirations. They nurture dreams and hopes of a future, in which they are free and successful. But, for some, the happiness is cut short by a practice that has life-altering health consequences.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a widely-practiced procedure that requires removing external female genitalia, partially (at times totally). The sad bit is most of us don’t know what its health risks are.

There are a string of challenges that are short-term such as pain & infections, whereas a few may last for longer periods of time. Shock, excessive bleeding, genital tissue swelling, difficulty while urinating – all of these are immediate results of female genital mutilation. In few cases, the health situation may worsen.

That’s not all, the procedure may have psychological consequences because more often than not it’s performed forcefully, which leads to stress & trauma.

If left untreated, the genital infection may turn chronic. It is then accompanied by extreme pain, vaginal discharge & itching.

Cyst formation, irregular and painful menstruation resulting from obstruction of vaginal opening, and keloids are some of the major long-lasting health problems girls and adult women face due to FGM.

Our social media experiment

On our social media handles, we had asked some of the users about their thoughts on whether Female Genital Mutilation should exist? Over 70% voted Yes, and most were girls. To be honest, we were a tad bit stirred by the response, but later figured most of these didn’t know what it meant.

What do we know ?

Lack of awareness seems to be the issue here. Most don’t know what it is and how it may affect one’s health. With this article, we are attempting to reach out to people so that they know the very basics of this issue and how it can change an individual’s life (adversely).