Ebola Is Temporarily Halting Female Genital Mutilation in Sierra Leone
LatestThe devastating Ebola outbreak in West Africa has one slim silver lining: it’s temporarily putting a stop to the female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone, where the procedure is traditionally performed on most pre-pubescent girls. Bloomberg reports that many FGM practitioners are refusing to do the procedure, because bodily fluids transmit Ebola.
Bloomberg reporters Silas Gbandia and Makiko Kitamura talked to a Sierra Leonean mother named Ballu Johnson who wants to ritually circumcise her 10-year-old daughter. (Although the practice is technically illegal, some 90% of women between 15 and 49 in Sierra Leone experience it, one of the highest rates in all of Africa and the highest rate in West Africa.) But when Johnson took the child to a secret society called the Bondo that performs FGM, they report, she “found that the procedure has been banned because of Ebola, which is spread by contact with bodily fluids.” An Al Jazeera report in December found the same thing: that FGM has been “drastically reduced” during the epidemic. Performing FGM on a girl infected with Ebola could spread the virus to the practitioner, known as a sowei.