Abstract:

Background: World Health Organisation (WHO) has been putting a lot of efforts to end female genital mutilation and together with global efforts that has intensified in recent there is a rising awareness of the numerous complications that go with the process, usually later in the life of the adult female. To examine the effect and impacts on these individuals is vital as prevalence occurs in many countries and the awareness of the health risk has to be ascertain because it is associated with physical, emotional and social health risks which is paramount to the cubing of this practice. This research aims to conduct a review of data so as to address the probability of stopping the act completely in all countries in the world

Methods: A mixed method synthesis was applied comparing the effects and impacts in different countries mostly in the African continent in ten different articles obtained from the Open Access Library Journal database, manually scanning of reference lists and summary feed from international organisations such as WHO, UNICEF and UN. The articles included quantitative and qualitative studies with statistical results and analysis. There were also studies carried out on the environmental issues as related to the act. The articles were in three different languages which included English, French and Spanish.

Results: The study population was made up of victims of the female genital mutilation and health professional who understood the process. The percentage of those who were unaware of the risk was 57.4% and the percentage of those who did not have formal education was 77.6%. There was also a high percentage of prevalence which was represented by 52%.

Conclusion: Female genital mutilation is an act which is supposed to be carried out with much precaution of the socio-cultural beliefs have to be maintained with a possibility of reclassifying the act.

Keywords: Female Genital Mutilation, prevalence, health risk.

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