Female genital mutilation shocks doctor in the delivery room

By Dr Kizito Lubano

Despite the passage of 20 years, the scene still remains vivid in my memory.

As a young medical officer in Nyamira District Hospital in the early 1990s, I conducted six deliveries one Thursday morning without much ado. At 1pm, I left for lunch in my house 500m away. The meal was fried eggs, ugali and mala, the only meal I knew how to prepare. Other times I ate boiled meat in nearby Hillside Inn.

As I settled down to eat, the phone extension rang – there were no mobiles that time. I did not pick as I wanted to finish the meal because I knew the chances of returning late in the night or even the following morning were high.

Three minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the labour ward midwife calling to inform me that the first-time mother I had delivered last was bleeding. I simply replaced the receiver and walked back as quickly as I could. From experience, when you hear bleeding, you move, no questions asked.

The midwife showed me to the procedure room where the patient had been moved to. I entered the side room apologising for perhaps not having tied up all the loose ends.

I was briefed about what had happened. When the new mother settled in the ward with her new baby, her mother-in-law and another woman had come to ‘visit’ her as soon as I had stepped out for lunch. The strange woman had circumcised the new mother and the two women immediately vanished! 

She explained that since the new mother was from outside the community, tradition required that she had to undergo the procedure to become fully accepted as a wife and mother. 

I went through the ABCs of a bleeding mother. As I removed the gauze bandage that had been placed by the midwife, I noticed a fresh, ruggedly cut surface and brisk bleeding. I quickly applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

I prepared local anesthesia to repair the rugged edges, which I finished in ten minutes.

The mourning patient whispered that the midwife, who was from the local community, had been part of the team that performed the ritual cut. As I walked to the nurses’ desk to write my notes, my eyes welled with tears.