FGM: “When I was 7 years old, I thought all the women in the world were being mutilated.”

Health workers, survivors and activists are calling for more efforts to stop female genital mutilation (FGM).

The head midwife at a London hospital said she was treating about six women a week for the effects of surgery to remove their external genitalia.

Huda Mohammed, from Whittington Health NHS Trust, said better education and more mental health support were needed.

One survivor, Hoda Ali, agreed, saying that FGM affected her entire life.

The 7-year-old was left in Somalia, severely unwell, where she underwent the surgery, which the World Health Organization defines as “any surgery that injures the female reproductive organs (labia or clitoris) for non-medical reasons”. It is said that

Ali said, “I had the surgery, but it takes two weeks to heal. After two weeks, they say, ‘You’re a woman, so go out and have fun.'”

Instead, she required further surgery and was sent to Europe for further treatment.

Due to complications from the surgery, she was unable to have children.

“It’s affected my entire life. It literally took away my chance to be a mother,” she said.

“No one has the right to take that away from me.”

Ali said the reason for FGM was “society.”

She said: “Being cut was something we talked about, it wasn’t hidden.

“I thought all women in the world would undergo FGM.”

She said the father was against having his daughters undergo surgery, but the mother insisted.

“My mother was a survivor, my grandmother was a survivor, all the women before me were survivors,” she said.

“The good thing is that I’m the last one. Because of my illness, my family stopped FGM.”

Ali now raises awareness of the dangers of FGM in communities across London and founded the charity The Vavengers, which runs workshops, community support hubs and national and international campaigns on FGM. There is.

As well as being a midwife, Mohamed also runs an FGM clinic in Archway.

She said early education and further training within the community is needed to prevent further occurrences of FGM.

“According to statistics, the age of children will be lowered from 8 to 9 years.

“So if you recognize this early on, the child will understand that this is wrong. That’s why I want early childhood education to provide such training,” she says.

Sema Gonor of “Vavengers” said she had three requests.

She said: “Please bring questions about FGM into the data set. Ask every woman in this country if they have undergone FGM so we can actually see the numbers.”

“The second is to bring reconstructive surgery to the UK.

“And the last thing is the lifelong mental health support that survivors and FGM may need.”