quoted statement is responsible for the mutilation of many thousands of helpless little girls and untold suffering and deaths.

The successor of Kenyatta, President Arap Moi, categorically prohibited female genital mutilation operations in 1982. He also alerted the Health Services that no more operations may be done in hospitals, which shows that the Kenyan Health Services were involved in the mutilations. Unfortunately, there has been no follow-up, teaching or educating the people against the mutilations. As a result, they have gone underground.

Excision, by cutting out the most sensitive tissues of a woman's body, extinguishes sexual sensitivity, pleasure and response to touch. The elimination of female sexual pleasure is the reason most frequently given for the genital mutilations, which is to keep "moral behavior of women in society" and "toto have as many children as possible, especially sons, on which their status in society depends. The biological facts about reproduction are unknown or ignored. It is widely believed, for instance, in Mali and Burkino Faso, and all over West Africa, that the clitoris connotes maleness, and the prepuce of the penis, femaleness. Hence, both have to be removed before a person can be accepted as an adult in his/her sex and society. It is also believed that a girl who is not operated on will run wild and disgrace her family. In Egypt, aesthetic reasons are sometimes cited for the operation, and this is occasionally said in other areas of Africa as well. It is said that women's external genitalia are ugly and must be removed to