Circumcision in a public parking lot... Unlicensed practitioner cuts off one-third of a 10 year-old boy's penis! From Sözcü Gazetesi -- 20 August 2007: After an unlicensed circumcision practitioner botched the circumcision of a child in a municipal parking lot, friends and family had to rush the boy to hospital in a panic. The hospital's on-duty doctor hastily sewed the severed penile piece back on, but the result won't be known anytime soon. The parents of the 10-year-old boy (C.N., from the Dikkaldırım Mahallesi; Dikkaldırım District of Bursa) had become eager recently to have their son circumcised -- even at the boy's advanced age for the procedure. So they made arrangements to have it done by an unlicensed person who was known locally as a sünnetçi (circumcision practitioner) -- and who had worked for a while in a sağlık ocağı (small town health clinic). During the procedure (that was performed in a spare room attached to the city parking lot), the boy began to scream in pain. When he suddenly became covered in blood, family and friends whisked him off to hospital, together with the severed piece of his penis -- where he underwent surgery to sew it back on. Eyvah! (My God!/How awful!) The boy's father who was waiting outside, said that he rushed into the room to find his son covered in blood when he heard a voice cry, "My god it's cut in two! It's detached." Psychological Trauma is likely The boy had an emergency operation under general anesthesia and Prof. Dr. Emin Balkan sewed the severed penile piece back into place. The Doctor said, "It was a successful operation, and the chance of full recovery is 70%." "But more important than that will be the psychological trauma that the child is likely to suffer. Even if he recovers from his physical wound, we believe he'll have psychological distress for some time to come." The Sözcu Gazetesi article goes on to say that 'it's a sorrowful event but it provides an important lesson." Dr. Balkan (who sewed the severed the penile part back on) said that too many Turkish people think that sünnet is a simple procedure. "Sünnet," he said, "is a surgical procedure -- and like all other such procedures, it must be carried out in a sterile environment. And it must be performed by a well-trained, experienced, and licensed medical-professional... This unfortunate boy may be adversely affected for the rest of his life -- by what has happened to him today."