Female genital cutting: prevalence, knowledge, and attitudes of Sohag University level students, Upper Egypt.

Background: Egypt showed high prevalence of female genital cutting (FGC). FGC had many harmful physical, psychological and sexual effects. Many efforts had been established to raise awareness about FGC and to decrease its incidence. Education may play a role to change the attitude towards FGC. Objective: This study is conducted in Sohag University to estimate the prevalence of FGC and to measure student's (including males) knowledge and attitudes toward FGC and to identify the reasons behind supporting or rejecting FGC practice.
Participants and methods: This is a cross-sectional study that included 1075 students from five faculties (Agriculture, Arts, Commence, Nursing and Education) and technical health institute selected by using simple random sample. A questionnaire was used to collect the relevant data. Statistical analysis was performed using STATA program. Results: The prevalence of FGC was 86.87%. Possible complications of FGC were known by 51-69% of the students. Thirty-six percent (36%) of students supported the FGC practice while 64% reject it. Males are significantly supporting FGC practice more than females (42% vs. 29%, p<0.0001). The reasons to support the practice were religious tradition (18.60%), cleanliness (11.63%), cultural and social tradition (21.19%), chastity (28.68%) and evidence of femininity (19.90%). The reasons to reject practice were no religious support (29.07%), painful procedure (23.15%), unhealthy procedure (24.56%) and bad social habit (22.38). Conclusion: One-third of university students were still supporting FGC practice especially males. Effort towards health education, better to include topic about FGC in the curriculum, will help in discontinuation of FGC in the future.