A team of surgeons in Kenya is giving hope and identity back to women who have undergone female genital mutilation, through a process known as clitoral reconstructive surgery.
The operation is, according to the doctors, expected to reduce pain and complications during childbirth, help the women feel sexual pleasure and even restore their identity, which they feel was stolen during circumcision.
The United Nations estimates that at least three million women are mutilated everyday.
Sarah Kimani met one woman who underwent the surgery in Nairobi.
She is among tens of women who have come here daily for the last two weeks for clitoral reconstructive surgery.
The surgeons who are to perform the surgeries are Dr. Marci Bowers, a US-based gynecologist and surgeon, and Dr. Adan Abdullahi a reconstructive plastic surgeon based in Kenya.
Gynaecologist and surgeon Dr. Marci Bowers says: “I have been doing clitoral restoration for eight years now, my interest started in my own training 35 years ago when we would see p0atients who were cut and people would say leave it alone, don’t talk about it, don’t touch it is cultural and I said that is wrong.”
On her recovery bed, she recounts her ordeal in the hands of the traditional circumcisers and said she was only 12 when she underwent this ordeal.
“I can remember being pinned down, I remember the blade going through me and that was it. We were taken home to recover.”
