Female Genital Cutting, Reproductive Tract Infections and Perinatal Outcome in Burkina Faso.

Guillem G Fortuny Fillo, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Tiziana Leone, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Quantitative studies analysing the association between female genital cutting (FGC) and adverse health outcomes are few and present mixed findings. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of FGC on a set of health outcomes in Burkina Faso. Using women’s self-reports from the 2003 Burkina Faso DHS, this study found that Burkinabe cut women are significantly more likely to experience correlates of reproductive tract infection. Nonetheless, no significant association was found between FGC and perinatal deaths or low-weight births. Such results were obtained after using a set of physiological, socio-economic, socio-cultural and exposure covariates that have been widely used in the literature as controls. Further research on the associations between FGC and adverse health outcomes is crucially needed since results are very likely to vary according to the type of cutting and socio-demographic factors of the sample analysed, as well, as according to the type of data collected.