Sadia Hussein: the FGM survivor who is saving girls from the knife

Being cut, aged 10, led to extraordinary pain and complications in childbirth. Now Hussein's campaign to end mutilation has led to a staggering change in attitudes

Sadia Hussein had been in labour for three days when she felt she could take no more. She could hear her mother crying in the distance, pleading with God to save her daughter's life.

But even though things were clearly not progressing as they should have been, the women in her small Kenyan village were resistant to the idea of sending her to hospital. Her mother told her that doctors would tear her apart" with a pair of scissors; that, at home, they could at least use a razor. So now, on top of the overwhelming pain of labour, there was this continuous cutting," Hussein recalls.