Clitoraid has been offering to train UK surgeons in Clitoroplasty since the UK doctors are only performing rudimentary surgery on FGM victims at the moment which are not aimed at restoring sexual pleasure.

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- 300 victims required surgery to repair damage caused by brutal ritual
- A dozen children needed medical help, including one with 'open wound'
- Experts say figures do not give the full picture of growing number of cases
- DPP says it is 'only matter of time' before prosecution is brought in UK

More than 2,100 victims of female genital mutilation have been treated in London hospitals since 2010, it emerged today.

Almost 300 women needed surgery to help them recover from the brutal ritual, new figures have revealed.

Among those treated in the capital's hospitals included 12 children, including one girl who had been left with an 'open wound' following the criminal act.

Despite being illegal in the UK, female genital mutilation is on the rise with an estimated 66,000 women dealing with the after-effects and more than 20,000 young girls thought to be at risk.

The procedure is associated with communities in Africa, particularly Mali, Somalia, Sudan and Kenya, as well as some parts of the Middle East.

Many girls living in Britain are taken to these countries for be 'cut', and some will be as young as five.

But it is becoming more prevalent in the UK and experts say today's figures are 'truly shocking' but there are 'far more victims' than the data shows.

In the majority of cases the clitoris is removed because it gives sexual pleasure.
A total of 2,115 FGM patients were seen between 2010 and now, the Evening Standard has revealed.

Dr Comfort Momoh, a specialist in dealing with these injuries at St Thomas’ Hospital, said: 'These statistics show a very significant number of women are being treated for FGM.

'But there are still lots out there who are not being identified because they don’t know where to go for help, aren’t being referred by GPs or are too scared to come forward.

'I’m really worried about girls, in particular. Where are they going to seek help? The GPs who are their first point of call often don’t have the knowledge. We also need teachers and lecturers to do more to at least signpost girls towards help.'

Nimko Ali was seven when she underwent Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia and now campaigns against it through her charity Daughters of Eve.

'For too long, it has been passed off as a "cultural" ritual. But this act is not about celebration. FGM is gender-based violence, it's as simple as that,' she said.

It came as Director of Public Keir Starmer said it was 'only a matter of time' before there is a prosecution for female genital mutilation.

'I think a prosecution is much closer now than it's been at any stage since this was made a criminal offence in this country,' he said.

'We have devised a strategy, and we have now got the intelligence-led operations that are bringing us very close to a prosecution.

'I do not think that's a failure - that is trying to grapple with a difficult problem. If it was easy there would have been a prosecution.'

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 4 – “Female Genital Mutation (FGM), once a horrific, regional tradition that mostly affected the millions of women living in Africa and the Middle East, is now a planetary problem because of immigration,” said Clitoraid spokesperson Nadine Gary in a statement released today. “We’re pleased to announce that one of Clitoraid’s volunteer surgeons will be giving a presentation in Upstate New York on Friday to alert medical professionals to a new restorative surgery that helps FGM victims.

Dr. Harold Henning, M.D., a gynecological surgeon living near Syracuse, New York, who has been in practice for over 30 years and volunteers his surgical skills for Clitoraid, will speak at 7:30 a.m. on September 6 to other physicians, physician assistants, nurses and other clinicians in the Sulzle Auditorium at the Marley Education Center in Syracuse.

“The emigration of many victims from their native lands means there are now thousands of women in the West suffering FGM effects,” Gary said. “The good news is that there’s now a treatment for them: a clitoral restorative surgery that works!”

She said doctors from around the world are learning the new technique, pioneered by a French surgeon after he saw FGM victims in Africa.

“Dr. Henning will explain the clitoral restoration procedure on Friday, which will help spread the word until any FGM victim anywhere in the world can have it,” she said.

Clitoraid, a non-governmental, nonprofit organization, was founded in 2006 after Rael, spiritual leader of the Raelian Movement, heard of Dr. Foldes’s innovative surgery. The organization helps FGM victims obtain the procedure, often providing it free of charge for those who can’t afford it.

Dr. Henning is one of the Clitoraid volunteer medical professionals who will travel to Bobodioulasso in Burkina Faso, West Africa for the inauguration of Clitoraid’s “Kamkaso Hospital” (translation: the Women’s Hospital) in March 2014. The facility will provide free clitoral restorative surgery for hundreds of FGM victims who have been on Clitoraid’s waiting list for several years.

“They’re looking forward to the day they will regain their sense of dignity and their ability to experience physical pleasure after the restoration of what was brutally taken away from them without their consent,” Gary said.

LAS VEGAS, Sept 04 – “It’s a victory for humanity,” Clitoraid spokesperson Nadine Gary said this morning, referring to the 50th clitoral reconstructive surgery Dr. Marci Bowers performed at her San Francisco clinic two weeks ago to reverse the effects of female excision (called female genital mutilation, or FGM, by the World Health Organization).
Clitoraid, an all-volunteer, U.S.-based charitable organization, was founded for humanitarian purposes in 2006 under the initiative of Rael, founder and leader of the International Raelian Movement. Dr. Bowers, who volunteers her services, is its chief surgeon.

“We want FGM victims worldwide to know that a surgical solution exists to overthrow this barbaric practice that amputated a large part of their lives,” Gary said. “Thanks to the volunteer work of our doctors and support staff, Clitoraid raises donations that are 100 percent dedicated to covering the technical costs of the operations.”
“Habi Ouarme was the 50th woman to recover her physical integrity under the expert hands of Clitoraid’s chief surgeon,” Gary said. She lives in Canada now, but like many African women, she was excised in early childhood, long before she moved to the West. She told us how happy and excited she is that this surgery can allow her to be a complete woman who can finally experience orgasm for the first time in her life.”

Clitoraid-assisted patients also get pre-surgical and post-surgical care.

“Our patients are assisted by psychologists who provide specialized support so that these women can make the transition to a much-changed life as smoothly as possible,” Gary explained.

She pointed out that Dr. Bowers was trained directly by a French surgeon. “He developed this extraordinary surgical repair technique,” Gary said. “All Dr. Bowers’s patients say after the procedure that they made the right decision to have the surgery and that they are pleased with the results. They can now lead a normal life, having regained their dignity and integrity as women.”

The addition of other volunteer doctors will allow more and more FGM victims to have the surgery, Gary said.

“Since her own training under the French surgeon, Dr. Bowers has started to train other surgeons who will take part in Clitoraid project,” Gary explained. “She’s very enthusiastic about being part of the team that in March 2014 will officially open what we call our “Pleasure Hospital” in Burkina Faso. We gave it that nickname because it will be a health center specializing in restoring the clitorises of excised African women.”

Surgically undoing the damage wrought by FGM is only part of Clitoraid’s mission.

“We must also do everything possible to eliminate FGM worldwide once and for all,” Gary said. “This 50th patient, Habi, entered the operating room to reverse a horrible act done in the name of an ignorant tradition. But According to the World Health Organization, 135 million women living today experience the effects of this horrific custom on a daily basis.”

She said surgically repairing its ravages of FGM for those already mutilated is playing an important role in discouraging the practice permanently.

“Why damage something that can later be repaired?” she asked. “There’s no point in it.”

Clitoraid doctors affirm that clitoral reconstructive surgery for FGM victims works


LAS VEGAS, July 29 – In a statement released today, volunteer doctors for Clitoraid, a non-profit organization that assists victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) expressed strong disagreement with a group of British specialists who say the clitoral reconstructive surgery pioneered by a French physician Dr. Foldes cannot work.

Last year Dr Pierre Foldes - the pioneer of the surgery - and his colleagues published a study in the Lancet. In 11 years, his team operated on nearly 3,000 women. A one-year follow-up was attended by 866 or 29% of those patients: 95 % (821) reported an improvement, or at least no worsening in pain; 94% (815) reported clitoral pleasure; and a remarkable 50 % (431) experienced orgasms!

In a letter to The Lancet, the French surgeon's critics said such claims are anatomically impossible.

“Where the body of the clitoris has been removed, the neurovascular bundle cannot be preserved,” they wrote. “There is therefore no reality to the claim that surgery can excavate and expose buried tissue."

Clitoraid volunteer Dr. Harold J. Henning, M.D., disagrees.

“I used to concur with what the British team wrote with regard to FGM, and I’ve seen the same opinion voiced by many U.S. gynecologists,” he said. We were lead to believe that the entire clitoris is removed during FGM, including the neurovascular bundle. But I’ve examined and performed clitoral reconstruction surgery for many patients, and to my surprise, in every such patient, although the tip or glans of the clitoris has been removed, the shaft or body with its attached neurovascular bundle is still present. With proper surgical technique, it can be restored to its anatomically correct position. Therefore, the French surgeon's stated results are supported by my clinical experience. I challenge the medical community to take another look at this subject and not approach it with blinders on.”

“For this British team to comment so dismissively about…non-reversibility after FGM should be an outrage to women everywhere,” said Dr. Marci Bowers, Clitoraid’s chief surgeon. “The suggestion that the clitoris is a pathetic, pea-sized organ whose absence after FGM means a sad and final outcome only serves to disempower women and trivialize female sexuality…The clitoris and its erotogenic plexus of nerves and erectile tissue is far larger than commonly acknowledged. The clitoris has been mapped, and it’s extensive, as any sexually aware, female-bodied person can attest. When the tip is excised, as in FGM, there is still much more beneath the surface. [The British team that wrote to The Lancet] insists that FGM is irreversible. But just ask any single patient of mine, or any of French surgeon's patients who has had this surgery. When a patient in tears cries joyfully to you that she has for the first time in her life experienced sexual pleasure, no further scientific proof is necessary.”

The French surgeon’s critics also told The Lancet that the international campaign against FGM “could be undermined by a false proposition that its ill effects can be reversed.”

“That’s the wrong way to look at it,” said Nadine Gary, spokesperson for Clitoraid. “When people know that FGM is pointless because the damage can be repaired, what’s the point of doing it in the first place?”