France: Alps-Riviera Province Seeks to Eradicate Female Circumcision

According to the Ministries of Education and Health, nearly 60,000 women and girls are circumcised or threatened to be in France. Among those listed are about 3,000 in the Provence-Alpes – Côte d’Azur regions, according to estimates by the National Institute of Demographic Studies, based on populations of migrants.

In the Alpes-Maritimes, where the number of females excised or threatened to be is estimated to nearly 500, maternity hospitals have received their form and the investigation has already begun.

“The problem is that these women do not talk about their mutilation, they are discovered through medical examination.” Dr. Nathalie Jugnet, a gynecologist in France, says that when the discovery is made at the time of delivery, it is a disaster.

He says women arrive “with tears and hemorrhages… simply because ‘everything’ is almost closed with these infibulated women, and because their remaining vaginal opening tears off. Then, we have to suture but our training has not prepared us to restore sexual function in women infibulated or excised … ” Jugnet said.

In the CHU of Nice, two surgeon gynecologists have specialized in the very delicate repair of these female genital mutilation.

“But the wounds of excision never close” explain the gynecologists who say the wounds linger sometimes ten or twenty years later. They are discovered in consultation and during physicals. They are continuing to learn more about the physical and psychological suffering of these African women.

Source: Salem-News – 17 April 2008