Your report (Intelligence on FGM to be shared by UK and US, 7 September) contains the potentially misleading statement that “Between January and March, there were 1,030 cases of FGM in England, according to the NHS”. This is not a count of the number of girls who were subjected to FGM during the three-month period. Instead, the number refers to women of all ages with FGM who were recorded for the first time when accessing the NHS in England for care. Overall, 1,745 women with FGM attended during the quarter, 85% of them for midwifery or obstetric care, and only 20 were aged under 18. Of the 1,260 whose countries of birth were reported, the majority were born in countries where FGM is practised and only 50 were born in the UK.
There are no reliable data about the numbers of girls born in the UK who are subjected to FGM and it may be much smaller than your article implies. In particular, it would be helpful if the police published more data about their activities in relation to FGM. Health professionals and others are required to report to the police any girl or woman under the age of 18 for whom they provide care, even if she is a refugee or asylum seeker who was subjected to FGM many years ago in her country of origin. No data have yet been published about the overall numbers of girls reported and, most crucially, how many of them have actually been subjected to FGM recently.
Alison Macfarlane
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• Thank you, Rose George, for such a helpful, sensible article on vaginal health (G2, 4 September). It was a wonderful antidote to reading about the number of women asking for labiaplasty, and to the advertisements for products which shame women into thinking that the smell of a healthy vagina needs masking with products that damage us. Yet another symptom of pervasive misogyny.
Pam Wagstaff
Woodbridge, Suffolk
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition
