NHS treats transgender people as second-class citizens, says watchdog


James Meikle
Wednesday 20 May 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/20/nhs-treats-transgender-people-as-second-class-citizens-says-watchdog#st_refDomain=nonbinary.proboards.com&st_refQuery=/thread/1681/treats-transgender-people-second-citizens

Delays in preparatory treatment and therapy, and years waiting for life-changing operations, put unacceptable pressure on patients, campaigners say

People preparing for gender reassignment are being treated as second-class citizens by the NHS in England, with many taking at least six years to go through the process, according to the state-funded watchdog Healthwatch.

Katherine Rake, its chief executive, said those seeking to change their gender often faced an "incredibly troubling" experience, with the process taking "a considerable part of people's lives".

A support group for transgender people also warned delays were leading to patients considering self-harm and suicide.

I don't think the process is particularly GOOD in most countries. Rake says that patients are lucky if they complete their transitions in six years; I think that a lot of U.S. people would also be thrilled to finish in six years or even eight. I have two buddies who started transition right around the time I did. One was finally able to arrange top surgery after almost six years on T; the other hasn't had top surgery yet after more than seven years. I'm finally in a position to get hysto (I expect to have it nearly seven years into my transition).

What country can serve as a model of timely and supportive transition services?

A trans man in the UK would be operated on within 18 weeks after referal.

This is certainly a very sad state of affairs.

A clinician with insufficient resources will eventually be reduced to robbing peter to pay Paul. In that situation every training we have demands we triage and treat the most urgent case first. Now unfortunately when you are trans and up against someone with an immediately life threatening condition this is not going to go well for you.

It is true that your treatment is necessary because without it your quality of life is poor. Unfortunately for someone with a myocardial infarction the bottom line is if they are not treated in a cath lab within sixty to ninety minutes they will probably die.

The bottom line is that those two patients should never be pitted against each other for resources, but in the current political climate where the USA has poisoned many British minds against social medicine the right wing politicians that are currently running the UK are wasting no opportunity to do precisely that.

They are keeping the service starved of resources so that those two patients, or others very like them are often in competition for resources, and thus treatments for conditions which are not immediately life threatening are being delayed.

I don't think anyone in the health service thinks this is satisfactory, but with the Great British Public voting for more austerity this is sadly what you get!

TLDR Cameron's austerity Britain is not a good place to be Old, Trans, Unemployed, Homeless, Disabled or indeed anything which depends on social resources because at least for the next five years the system is increasingly going to take great delight in kicking you when you are down. So if you are any of the aforementioned things you'd better have the resources to pay your own way or the outlook is pretty grim.