Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Arnold attended a special awareness event about female genital mutilation (FGM) last week.
Burton-based first aid training provider ABC Training Services hosted the event for healthcare professionals held at Anglesey Training Centre on Friday 21 November.
Mrs Arnold spoke at the event about the work being done in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent to eradicate FGM alongside Tracey Hardie, manager of the Sexual Abuse and Rape Advisory Centre in Burton.
The event was part of a growing campaign to tackle FGM which also saw over 400 professionals come together at a day-long conference at Stafford County Showground in September.
Around 24,000 girls are currently at risk of FGM – which almost always goes unreported – across the UK which means that this is a problem that cannot be ignored in Staffordshire.
Mrs Arnold said: “There is no justification for female genital mutilation and we must commit our resources, our expertise and our determination to eradicating this practise from Staffordshire and beyond,
“The event was a great success. ABC Training Service plays an important part in the ongoing momentum to raise awareness and join together to tackle FGM.”
FGM, sometimes called female circumcision or cutting, involves the partial or total removal of the external female genital organs for cultural reasons. It is practised in 28 African countries and some in the Middle East and Asia and affects migrant communities in the UK.
Sandra Lees, from ABC Training Services, said: “The conference in Stafford highlighted many interesting facts and figures about FGM. We realised that there are many people, including professionals, who knew very little about the problem.
“We felt that our staff, including doctors, nurses, paramedics and ambulance technicians who work in the Burton area, would benefit from further information – which is why hosted the event last week.”
Meanwhile a social media campaign calling for an end to FGM cumulated with an online flashmob last Friday. In total, 250 supporters of the campaign used Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to spread the same message ‘Female genital mutilation amounts to torture & child abuse which all girls deserve to live free from #EndFGM’ The campaign reached almost 350,000 people.
