To take care of women victims of genital mutilation, hospitals have opened specific care units. Among other things, victims can benefit from reconstructive surgery.
They hardly ever talk about it, including to those close to them. It must be said that the subject touches on what is most intimate in women – their sex, but also their pleasure, their sexuality. In France, more than 50,000 women are living with genital mutilation. Most are from Africa, where 28 countries practice excision.
Usually silent, society grants them every February 6 an international day to bring them out of the shadows. But the rest of the year, fortunately, other actors are interested in the fate of circumcised women. Among them: health professionals.
“16% of women who give birth here are excised”
For several years now, around fifteen hospitals have set up specific care units to take care of these mutilated women. The approach is multidisciplinary and must respond to the multiple physical and psychological difficulties induced by excision. Thus, doctors, nurses, psychologists, sexologists, even lawyers, intervene in their therapeutic care.
This is the case of the Saint-Denis Hospital Center, in Seine-Saint-Denis, which opened a unit within its gynecological department two years ago. “Our department is particularly concerned by this phenomenon,” explains Ghada Hatem, head of the gynecology department. We found that 16% of women who give birth here are circumcised. It was our responsibility to offer them a solution ”.
Women push open the door to this service for a variety of reasons. Some do not even know if they were mutilated – when the act was carried out after birth – and want to be sure. Others complain about the after-effects they have kept – pain, incontinence, depression …
Reconstructive surgery
“During the first consultation, we identify their problem. Do they have sexual disorders, with absence of libido or pleasure, pain during penetration? Or do they suffer from identity problems and psychotrauma linked to the lack of consent during excision? Do they come because they are in pain, on a daily basis? The surgical intervention cannot answer all the situations ”, specifies Ghada Hatem.
In the end, a third of the women received in the consultations of Saint-Denis will go to the operating room – that is to say eight to ten per month. Surgical intervention has been carried out for ten years in French hospitals, under the leadership of urologist Pierre Foldès, the father of this surgical technique. It lasts half an hour and consists of incising the scar at the level of the vulva to free the rest of the clitoris which has not been excised.
Listen Ghada Hatem, head of the gynecology department (Saint-Denis Hospital Center) : “During excision, little girls struggle, it happens very quickly; often only the hood of the clitoris is cut ”.
Learn to reclaim your body
The surgical intervention gives satisfactory results. Anatomically, women regain a “normal” sex after several months – six, on average. The nerve endings are gradually rebuilt and allow the woman to have sexual sensations and pleasure.
However, the road to a fulfilling sexuality can be long. “Some women are disappointed because they imagined having repeated orgasms after the operation,” says Ghada Hatem. It does not happen like that… In addition to being excised, these women come from a culture where sex is considered dirty, where you have to be very modest … In short, they have to reclaim their body ”.
This is the whole point of a multidisciplinary approach. Founded by Pierre Foldès, the Institute of Reproductive Health, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, takes care of the pre and postoperative follow-up of women victims of excision. About fifty women from all over the world come for consultations every month. Young girls, mothers … The ages vary as much as the profiles.
The support is completely free. Moreover, the French Social Security, a pioneer on the subject, has fully reimbursed the care since 2004. “It is not cosmetic surgery for rich Saudi women, but a humanitarian operation”, specifies Frédérique Martz, who remembers the story of one of his patients, during his first postoperative frenzy. “She turned on the bedroom light and asked her mate to have sex in the light. For the first time, she told me, she was not ashamed of her body ”.
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