Ms Lena Alai, Acting Volta Regional Director of the Department of Gender has asked women in the Nkwanta District to take issues of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and fistula seriously because of their life threatening consequences.

“It is therefore important for women to take absolute control of not only their health but education and improved socio-economic conditions to avoid such devastating reproductive health problems.”

She was addressing a one-day advocacy and sensitization forum on the causes, prevention and treatment of obstetric fistula and negative effects of FGM in Nkwanta. Ms Alai made the participants aware that FGM involved “all procedures involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia’, on religious, cultural and religious grounds to usher young girls into womanhood.

Fistula on the other hand describes life threatening complications in child birth arising from FGM and often aggravated by other external limitations. Ms Alai said eleven women from the Volta region, including three from the Nkwanta District, received free treatment for fistula between 2013 and 2014 with support from the ECOWAS Gender Unit.

“The next group of patients is being mobilized for attention,” she said. She said though Ghana outlawed FGM in 1994, the practice has persisted. Ms Alai said a Multiple Indicator Survey in 2006, which showed that four (4) per cent of women respondents, between 15-45 years had undergone some form of FGM, 1.3 per cent of whom were from the Volta region.

Resource persons from the Ghana Health Service made pictorial presentations and answered questions on fistula and FGM and their associated risks and complications.