Call the Midwife is known for tackling many sensitive real life issues, and Sunday night’s instalment (26 February) was no exception.
Not only did the programme continue to tell the story of Sister Mary Cynthia’s mental health struggle, but it also tackled one of the show's most sensitive topics to date – Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
The nurses of Nonnatus House meet Nadifa, an expecting mother from Somaliland, who is struggling with the effects of FGM, the barbaric process of deliberate, non-medical mutilation of the female genitalia.
Valerie and Barbara were left baffled while examining Nadifa, as they’d never encountered such a procedure before.
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‘Do you mind me asking, have you had any surgery, down there?’ Valerie asked a bewildered Nadifa.
But unbeknown to the expecting mum, who was born and raised in Somaliland, FGM wasn’t actually a normal procedure for a woman to have.
And in harrowing scenes, poor Nadifa experiences the damaging effects of FGM, enduring a traumatic birth, resulting in Valerie using scissors to cut an opening for the baby to be born.
And users praised the Midwife team for their ‘brave’ and ‘sensitive’ depiction of FGM:
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An estimated 200 million girls around the world have undergone the procedure, and Nimko Ali, co-founder of Daughters of Eve, and a victim of FGM herself, worked closely with the show’s bosses on this episode.
The show’s writer Heidi Thomas has said she’s wanted to tackle the subject for a long time.
‘I have been interested in FGM for some time and it did seem to me that if we waited until 1962, the Somali community were beginning to settle and establish a foothold in the East End,’ she told BBC Woman’s Hour.
The show also continued the harrowing mental health storyline of Sister Mary Cynthia’s struggle with depression and her journey of undergoing Electroconvulsive Therapy.
The show has already been praised for the way it handled the sensitive subject, but in Sunday’s episode also explored the mistreatment of people with mental health problems in the 60s.
Next week’s episode of Call the Midwife turns to the subject of children with disabilities, meeting a family who are coping with the stresses of caring for a disabled child as a result of thalidomide.
Call the Midwife airs next Sunday at 8pm on BBC One.
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