Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Impacts of Female Genital Mutilation on Women's Reproductive Health

Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt

Corresponding Author:

Dr. Khaled Kasim
Department of Public Health and Community Medicine
Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University
Nasr city, Cairo, Egypt
E-mail: kasimyhr@yahoo.com

Received Date: March 21, 2012; Accepted Date: April 05, 2012; Published Date: April 07, 2012

Citation: Kasim K, Shaaban S, El Sadak AE, Hassan H (2012) Impacts of Female Genital Mutilation on Women’s Reproductive Health. J Community Med Health Edu 2:137. doi: 10.4172/jcmhe.1000137

Copyright: © 2012 Kasim K, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: Female genital mutilation is common practice in Egypt with its drawback effects. Studies concerned with the impacts of that practice on women’s health in general and reproductive health in particular are sparse. Objective: To assess the impact of female genital mutilation (FGM) on some reproductive health factors among Egyptian women. Material and Methods: A case-control study was conducted in Alexandria governorate, Egypt. The study recruited 200 circumcised (case group) and 200 uncircumcised (control group) women attending maternity health care centers in the studied area. Interview questionnaires were used to collect data from the studied women. The questionnaire included sociodemographic and reproductive data related to FGM. Chi square tests were used to compare between the two groups with p value ≤ 0.05 as a significant difference. A multivariate logistic regression was also used to assess the effect of FGM on the studied reproductive health factors. Results: The study revealed statistically significant associations between FGM and adverse reproductive health. The risk of dyspareunia was high among circumcised women with an adjusted odds ratio (OR) of 3.9 (95% CI = 2.5- 6.1). There have also been significant high risks of recurrent vaginal infection (OR = 3.3; 95% 1.6-7.5), infertility (OR = 2.9; 95% CI = 1.5-5.9), and post partum hemorrhage (OR = 3.2; 95% CI = 1.2-8.3) among circumcised women. Conclusions: Women with FGM are significantly more likely to have adverse reproductive health than women without FGM. This finding is highly relevant for preventive work against this ancient practice.

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