Excerpt:
Women are being let down by a lack of clarity over procedures for reporting incidents of female genital mutilation (FGM), the director of the Royal College of Midwives in Northern Ireland has said.
Seventeen cases of the illegal practice occurred in the Belfast Trust area in just over nine months (April 2017 to January 2018), and Breedagh Hughes said that as figures are not recorded here, it means in reality there are many more hidden victims.
"The fact that there have been no official, practical guidelines for nurses, midwives, social workers, anyone working at the coalface, means it's very difficult for anyone to know what to do when confronted with a case of FGM," she said.