Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chris, first of all I want to thank you for the opportunity to go to Bangladesh with you last year. It was an amazing, life-changing experience for me, and has given me a whole new perspective on what we need to do globally.
Each one of you spoke about prevention, and prevention being so important. I want to take us to an issue that affects so many of the countries we talk about, particularly in Africa.
I don't know how many of you have read the book Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She talks at length in that book about her experience, where female genital mutilation took place, a custom performed by her grandmother on both her and her sister at the ages of 9 and 11. It's brutal. The stitching done to these young girls afterwards is for pleasurable sex for a male later on. But the effects on those girls--infections, bladder infections--were ongoing in their lifetimes. The psychological and physical impacts of that custom are horrific.
When we talk about prevention and these young girls who are becoming pregnant, the access to medical care is non-existent. But what if you had someone in the village who was a trained professional, at whatever level?
Chris, you and I saw women who were the sasthya sabika in Bangladesh. They were trained in the area of tuberculosis in particular. What would be the benefit of having someone trained in midwifery attending these young ladies in these countries where we are not going to be changing these cultures any time quickly, if ever? That is going to be a long-term strategy. How would such a preventative strategy influence the health of these young girls?