Prevalence and Determinants of Female Genital Cutting among Primary school Girls in Addis Ababa Ethiopia
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Date
2009-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background: Female Genital Cutting (FGC) is practiced throughout the world, with the
practice concentrated most heavily in Asia and Africa. Although the magnitude of FGC
in Ethiopia has decreased still the prevalence is high because the procedure doesn’t have
any benefit.
Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of FGC and its potential
factors contributing to the act of FGC among primary in-school girls of Addis Ababa.
Methods: There were approximately two hundred ten thousand girls who were enrolled
in 656 primary schools in Addis Ababa. First the schools were stratified according to
their ownership as government, public, private and religious schools. Then one primary
school was randomly selected from each stratum. A total of 442 girls were proportionally
selected from the four selected schools. The association of FGC to demographic and
other important variables was tested by chi-square test. A stepwise background logistic
regression model was also applied to test further the significant associations observed in
chi square tests using SPSS version 15.A p value below 0.05 was considered statistically
significant.
Results: The mean age of circumcision was 2.9 ranging from 1 to 5 years. The
prevalence of FGC was significantly higher (36.6%) in government schools than public
(28.9%), private (5.1%) and religious (6.3%) schools. Likewise the prevalence of FGC
was higher in parents with lower income (19.9%) group & low educational status of
mothers (12.5%) and fathers (10.1%).
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The proportion of mothers deciding to perform FGC was higher (39%) than fathers
(23.8%) and other relatives (22.9%).The vast majority (94.1%) of the girls’ parents stated
that FGC is harmful practice. Although most (94.6%) parents were aware of FGC
complication, still about a quarter (25.8%) of them have circumcised their daughters.
FGC had significantly association with ethnicity, education, occupation, income and
cultural reasons given by the families. In the multivariate analysis, of these factors only
the reason of being FGC painful and healthy procedure was found as a predictor of the
practice of female circumcision (AOR=0.35; 95%=0.17 to 0.72).
Conclusions: Despite a high level of knowledge regarding the complications of FGC and
a high level of awareness, FGC practice is prevalent among primary schoolgirls in Addis
Ababa and most of these circumcisions were performed by the decision of mothers so
that health education for women through different women’s forum and CBO (Idir,
Mahiber) is recommended in order to bring significant behavioral change
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Keywords
Female Genital Cutting (FGC)