FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION FORMS AND ASSOCIATED FACTORS AMONG MOTHER-DAUGHTER PAIRS OF KEBRI BEYAH TOWN, SOMALI REGION, EASTERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Background: Female genital mutilation is “all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”. xiii Female genital mutilation is nearly always carried out on children and is therefore a violation of the rights of the child.Infibulation, which is the most severe form of female genital mutilation, is mostly practiced in the north-eastern region of Africa including Ethiopia and Somalia. Objective: To assess magnitude of female genital mutilation forms and to identify the factors associated with female genital mutilation forms among mother-daughter pairs of kebri beyah town, Somali region, eastern Ethiopia, 2017 Methodology: Community based quantitative cross-sectional study design supplemented by qualitative studywas applied on 410mother-daughter pairs, 4 traditional circumcisers, 3 traditional birh attendants and 3 mothers. Simple random sampling method was used to select the houses of the respondents (mothers). Then, data was entered into EpiData 3.1 which was exported and analyzed using SPSS 20. Face to face in-depth interview method was applied to gather data from mothers, traditional circumcisers and traditional birth attendants who were purposely selected to participate in the qualitative study. P-value of ≤ 0.05 was considered the level of significant in the ordinal logistic regression. Result: majority (95.6%) of the mothers and 89.5% of the daughters were circumcised. FGM was 98.5% and 92.95% prevalent among the Somali ethnic mothers and daughters respectively. Slightly more than 2/3rd (67.3%) of the mothers and more than half (51.5%) of the daughters were infibulated. More than 3/4th (78.5%) of the infibulation were performed by traditional circumcisers. Maternal age AOR 1.07 with 95% CI (1.01-1.14), mothers who can’t read and write AOR 3.60 with 95% CI (1.20-7.81), only able to read and write AOR 3.28 with 95% CI (1.10-9.72) complete elementary AOR 3.0 with 95% CI (1.10-8.44), no maternal media exposure AOR 3.80 with 95% CI (1.37-10.52), pastoral father’s occupation AOR 4.13 and traditional circumcisers AOR 4.48 with 95% CI 2.17-9.25) were the variables significantly associated with forms of FGM. Conclusion and Recomendation More than 2/3rd (67.3%) of the mothers and about half (51.5%) of the daughters were infibulated. Kebri Beyah Woreda administrative office and NGOs had better give trainings and campaigns to traditional circucisers and TBAs to giveup female genital mutilation