Female Genital Mutilation costs $1.4 billion annually: UN health agency

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) poses serious risks to the health and well-being of women and girls and has a crippling economic toll of $ 1.4 billion globally per year in cost of treating its total health impacts, according to the World Health Organisation.

It is estimated that more than 200 million women and girls have undergone FGM, which involves altering or injuring female genital organs for cultural or non-medical reasons.

The procedure is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and 15-years-old, and the impacts on their health and well-being can be immediate—from infections, bleeding, or psychological trauma—to chronic health conditions that can occur throughout life.

New modelling by the UN agency to coincide with the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, marked on Thursday, reveals that the cost of treating the total health impacts of FGM would amount to $ 1.4 billion globally per year.

The figure sees individual countries devoting nearly 10 per cent of their yearly expenditure to treat FGM. For some countries, it could be as high as 30 per cent.

"FGM is not only a catastrophic abuse of human rights that significantly harms the physical and mental health of millions of girls and women; it is also a drain on a country’s vital economic resources," Director of WHO’s Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research Ian Askew said.

"More investment is urgently needed to stop FGM and end the suffering it inflicts."

The UN Children’s Fund further reports that around a quarter of FGM survivors, or roughly 52 million women and girls, were cut by health care providers.

The death of a 12-year-old girl in Egypt last month highlighted the dangers of medicalised FGM.

Although Egyptian authorities banned FGM in 2008, it is still common there and in Sudan, according to UNICEF.

Agency analysis indicates that medicalised FGM is increasing due to the misguided belief that the dangers of FGM are medical, rather than a fundamental violation of a girl’s rights.

"Doctor-sanctioned mutilation is still mutilation. Trained health-care professionals who perform FGM violate girls’ fundamental rights, physical integrity and health," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.