Gender care team: Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute
By Pooja P
Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, A constituent college of Sri Balajee Vidyapeeth, Puducherry. The gender care committee of the MGMCRI was established in October 2016. It is a unique programme within the institution. It is deemed to be institutional distinctiveness. The Gender Care Team's aims include facilitating gender reassignment procedures and other gender transition therapies and offering gender transition services that are culturally relevant, safe, affordable, non-judgmental, and medically and legally sound. The hospital has registered over 500 patients from 16 states all over the country and conducted over 300 surgeries through its regular transgender clinic.
( Courtesy: Google )
The transgender community is vulnerable to both physical and mental abuse. They have significant hurdles, and one of the major hurdles is accessing the healthcare system. It is very difficult for them to access care because of discrimination and phobias, says Dr Saravana Kumar Subbaraj, the Chief Surgeon of the Gender Care Committee. The initiation of the clinic for the transgender community in the institution started in 2010.
The main goal of the committee is to give access to healthcare to the transgender community and raise awareness about sexually transmitted diseases. And also to access treatment for HIV with the Memorandum of Understanding with the Nationalised Control Society, which initially had an MOU with another community-based NGO, Sahodaran, an organisation working for the LGBTQ+ community. Then later, started to provide gender-affirming care.
Since there are no national-wide guidelines available for the transgender community, in that context, we decided to form a committee, which is called a gender care committee, says Dr Saravana Kumar Subbaraj. The surgical department and the transgender community itself are only two of the many stakeholders in the institution. The institution contains two transgender community stakeholders, a legal adviser, a stakeholder from the nursing department, and other stakeholders from other departments. Stakeholders from the various departments collaborated to develop the guidelines. An important role is played by mental health professionals in surgery.
The mental health professionals are the gatekeepers; they refer the patients to us, says the chief surgeon. Mental health professionals are the main stakeholders of the gender care team. The cost of the surgery is Rs. 35,000 per patient, as it is charged only for the consumables and materials used for the surgeries. "When the trans woman doctor arrived from Delhi to work at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute, I was intrigued. So, I chose to have my operation in the hospital and it felt like home,” says N Jency, a transwoman from Chennai who had gender affirmation surgery at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research University.
The gender care committee of the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute has a unique opportunity to address the personal and professional needs of transgender community members, and it gives the community access to healthcare and the transition process. The team members are now developing a specific policy and process for the workplace transition of transgender employees. The group also intends to collaborate with a national NGO to modify policies and curricula to make medical programmes LGBTQI-inclusive. integrating LGBTQI people into palliative care, creating a policy on intersex procedures in collaboration with the NHM.The institute has become a prominent centre in southern India for gender reassignment surgeries.
[ Reported by Pooja Premkumar, Lavanyaa Sreekirishnan, Yashwini A ]