Protest led by transgender community in Kochi
Kochi: The transgender community is caught in a deadly snare set by the private hospitals and the bills charged by them for performing sex reassignment surgeries. These hospitals are mostly centralized in Kochi. It is a fatal flaw in the system that there are no government laws regarding the matter of surgeries and no facilities in the hospital for the treatment and surgery of people belonging to the transgender community.
Although a request was submitted to the Social Welfare Department three years ago regarding the inclusion of treatment and surgery facilities at government hospitals, there have not been any developments on that front. The private hospitals are charging bills as per their wish. Transgender activist Tripthi Shetty said that due to this reason, the ones who need surgery are unable to go through with the procedure. Such surgeries are performed free of cost in Tamil Nadu.
The transgender community opines that the doctors in the state are not familiar with the procedure and that most of the time they perform surgeries as something experimental and lacking all sense of seriousness. The government provides funds for the surgeries, but for the fund to be approved, the bills must be submitted.
This forces them to arrange money before the surgery. The winner of Miss Trans Global India 2021, Sruthy Sithara, says that because of this reason, only affluent people can afford the cost of surgeries.
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