[Female circumcision; histories of 3 patients]

Three Somali women presented with problems of the infibulation they had undergone when they were girls. The first one was 22 years old and had problems with coition, the second one was 21 years old and had problems with parturition, the third one was 28 years old and had an epidermal cyst near the ventral commissure of the vulva. Infibulation is a form of female circumcision, in which the clitoris, labia minora and labia majora are removed and the ostium vaginae is reduced to less than a centimeter. In the Netherlands the Ministry of Health, Wellbeing and Sport and the Association of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have declared themselves opponents to female genital mutilation carried out by Dutch physicians. The association decided also to not carry out reinfibulation, e.g. after parturition.