Reuters Examines Surgical Operation Offered In Burkina Faso To Restore Some Sensation Lost From Female Genital Cutting

About 100 women in Burkina Faso have had surgery to reconstruct the clitoris and restore some sexual sensation lost from female genital cutting since the country last year became the first in Africa to offer the procedure, Michel Akotionga -- head gynecologist at the main public hospital in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso -- recently said, Reuters reports. According to Reuters, as many as three-quarters of women in Burkina Faso have undergone genital cutting (Schwarz, Reuters, 8/21).

Female genital cutting -- sometimes referred to as female circumcision or female genital mutilation -- is a practice in which there is a partial or full removal of the labia, clitoris or both. About 6,000 girls undergo the practice daily worldwide, and the World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 140 million women worldwide are circumcised. At least 90% of women who undergo genital cutting live in developing countries -- such as Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan -- while almost no women undergo the practice in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to UNICEF (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/10).

The reconstructive surgery costs about $150 in public hospitals and as much as $400 in private clinics in Burkina Faso. According to Reuters, the surgery is possible because most of a woman's clitoris is embedded within the body, and usually only the few external centimeters are removed, which allows a physician to reattach some of the embedded part. For the surgery, doctors "open the skin around the remaining clitoris, dissect it and pull it toward the exterior end to fix it at the skin with stitches," Akotionga said, adding, "The remaining part of the clitoris is ... enervated, which is to say it has nerves, but it doesn't play exactly the same role as in a woman who was never excised."

Alice Behrendt of Plan International said she is concerned that some families might try to re-excise women who have the reconstructive surgery. "Already there are cases where the parents or grandparents think the excision was not done fully enough, that the girl is not yet pure, and they insist on her doing it again," Behrendt said. Benjamine Doamba, a campaigner against female genital cutting in the country, said, "I support science that permits such medical advances, but for me it is essential to stop the practice altogether so there is no need to repair anything later" (Reuters, 8/21).

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