Female genital mutilation in Switzerland: a survey among gynaecologists.

QUESTION UNDER STUDY: To evaluate the situation of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Switzerland. METHODS: Through a questionnaire, Swiss gynaecologists were asked if they have been confronted to FGMs, if they have been asked to perform infibulations and FGMs. The health representatives (Kantonsärzte/médecins cantonaux) were interviewed on FGM activity at the Canton level. Swiss Medical Schools were asked if FGM was included in the pregraduate curriculum, and an estimated prevalence rate for FGMs in Switzerland was gathered. RESULTS: Among Swiss gynaecologists, 20% reported having been confronted with patients presenting with FGM and among them 40% had been asked about reinfibulation. Gynaecologists are occasionally asked about the possibility of performing FGMs in Switzerland. No activity concerning FGM is reported by health authorities in the Cantons. Teaching about FGM is not included in the curriculum of any of the Swiss medical schools. Approximately 6,700 girls at risk and women who have undergone FGM live in Switzerland. CONCLUSION: The extent to which gynaecologists are confronted to women with FGM may justify further action to try to better understand the situation in Switzerland. Improvement of care by better education of health care providers (guidelines) and prevention of new cases by women's education should also be considered.

Effort, reward and self-reported mental health: a simulation study on negative affectivity bias.

Background : In the present article, we propose an alternative method for dealing with negative affectivity (NA) biases in research, while investigating the association between a deleterious psychosocial environment at work and poor mental health. First, we investigated how strong NA must be to cause an observed correlation between the independent and dependent variables. Second, we subjectively assessed whether NA can have a large enough impact on a large enough number of subjects to invalidate the observed correlations between dependent and independent variables.Methods : We simulated 10,000 populations of 300 subjects each, using the marginal distribution of workers in an actual population that had answered the Siegrist's questionnaire on effort and reward imbalance (ERI) and the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ).Results : The results of the present study suggested that simulated NA has a minimal effect on the mean scores for effort and reward. However, the correlations between the effort and reward imbalance (ERI) ratio and the GHQ score might be important, even in simulated populations with a limited NA.Conclusions : When investigating the relationship between the ERI ratio and the GHQ score, we suggest the following rules for the interpretation of the results: correlations with an explained variance of 5% and below should be considered with caution; correlations with an explained variance between 5% and 10% may result from NA, although this effect does not seem likely; and correlations with an explained variance of 10% and above are not likely to be the result of NA biases. [Authors]