UNICEF, media seek end to female genital circumcision

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), health experts and media practitioners have urged Nigerians who are in the practice of female genital circumcision to desist saying it is harmful and deadly.

They made the call at a workshop organised for journalists in
Oyo,Osun and Ekiti states to sensitise the populace on the evil effects and health hazards posed by female genital  circumcision.

In her presentation, a representative of UNICEF,  Mrs. Roseleen Akinroye, said the practice should be stopped because it poses life-threatening experience for women during childbirth and warned circumcisers to abandon the act.

She condemned plans by some people to use medical professionals as justification to sustain the practice stressing that the use of expert does not remove the health danger female genital cutting constitutes to the health of womenfolk.
Akinroye, who is a Child Protection Specialist, said: “ This harmful practice is unacceptable and should not be encouraged by anybody under any guise. Total abandonment of the practice should be preached by all.”

Osun State Coordinator of Inter African Committee on Harmful
Traditional Practices, Mrs. Aduke Obelawo, said it was worrisome that some medical workers engaged in female circumcision despite the level of their medical knowledge about is danger.
She said the medical workers concerned constitute serious threat to the success of the campaign against the harmful traditional practice.

A Consultant, Reproductive and Family Health, University College Hospital [UCH], Ibadan, Prof. Dupe Onadeko, also charged parents to desist from the act.
The health expert said the practice of Female circumcision has found to be an ineffective means of preventing promiscuity among  females.

She said the harmful practice had been found to be highly ineffective to curb promiscuity and should be stopped because of its numerous adverse effects on health.