Healthcare for global transgender population is not good enough
The transgender community around the world do not receive adequate health care, reported a study in the medical journal The Lancet.
Author of the study, Sam Winter, stressed the importance of improving trans peoples rights to healthcare.
He said: “Many of the health challenges faced by transgender people are exacerbated by laws and policies that deny them gender recognition.”
“In no other community is the link between rights and health so clearly visible as in the transgender community.
The authors of the study are pressuring the World Health Organisation to move the transgender diagnosis from it’s manual as a mental and behavioural disorder to a chapter on conditions related to sexual health.
They also called for physicians to receive training about the heath care needs of transgender community whose health concerns include and extend beyond female and male hormone treatments.
The study reported that of the 25 million transgender people in the world 60% are likely to struggle with depression. This community also have 50 times greater risk of contracting HIV.
Transgender people face discrimination not only in healthcare. Access to work and public places is proving taxing on the community, with a number of laws being implemented to stunt trans progression.
North Carolina’s bathroom bill has caused controversy in the states, where they ruled that people must use the bathroom of the sex they were assigned at birth.
Earlier this month a woman was turned away by an Airbnb host because she is transgender.
8 European countries do not legally recognise transgender people and 17 european countries sterilise people seeking gender recognition.
Hundreds of trans people are being murdered across the world. Planet Transgender reports that a trans person is being killed every 21 hours. However, many murders against trans people go unreported because of a country’s failure to recognised gender identity.
The study is one in a series of reports that evaluate the needs of transgender people
