Health minister K K Shailaja has said, in a statement issued here, that transgender clinics will be set up in all government medical college hospitals soon. A decision in this regard has been taken and a clinic has been set up at the Kottayam Medical College Hospital on a pilot basis.
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The OP wing at Kottayam is open once in a month and all the departments in the hospital are coordinating well with the unit. The services of specialists from all the departments have been made available for the OP wing, said the minister.
The government is now planning to introduce a surgical wing exclusively for transgender persons. The idea is to begin such surgical wings in two medical college hospitals. The first wing will come up in Kottayam within one month.
The transgender clinics will function on the first Tuesday of every month. The doctors from general medicine, psychiatry, dermatology, endocrinology and plastic surgery will be attending the patients at this clinic.
Health cards will also be distributed to the transgender persons through the clinics. Apart from this, a para-legal volunteer will also be posted at these clinics to provide legal help for the community members.Three transgender persons have already been selected as the legal volunteers.
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The idea is to develop these clinics into centres with sex reassignment surgery facilities in future.
Already a sex reassignment surgery has been successfully performed for the first time at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital. The patient was a 41-year-old woman from Thiruvananthapuram who wanted to become a male.
"It is a fact that transgender persons are not getting timely and adequate treatment. These clinics will provide them support for their health care. There are some peculiar health issues faced by this section of the people and they are not aware of the treatments available. These clinics will help address this," said the health minister.