The UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee today published submissions to an inquiry into LGBT healthcare, revealing the high level of concern about access to gender-related services.
The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) warned
that “specialised gender services is growing exponentially,” adding that
“excessive waits result in acute stress, self-harm, suicidality and
resort to self-medication.”
GIRES warned that failing to meet the demand would be a “grave
mistake,” while LGBT+ charity Stonewall added: “It is vital that NHS
England set out a clear plan to increase capacity and reduce waiting
times to gender identity services.”
Notts Trans Hub said: “The wait for trans related hormone treatment
or surgeries is in multiple years, not months, and there are not enough
surgeons nationwide with the experience required. More need to be
trained up urgently to keep up with referral rates.”
The inquiry also took submissions from members of the public, nearly
all of whom spoke about their own experience of waiting times for
transition-related services.
In one submission, Andrea Wyatt explained that she was referred to a
Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) in July 2015, but did not receive her first
appointment until July 2018, three years later—only to be told to seek a
second opinion before joining the years-long waiting list for surgery.
She added: “It’s been a traumatic three years [with] no real support
from the GIC clinic. I believe the long waiting times is direct
discrimination and the NHS has failed to provide adequate medical care
and treatment.”
Another person wrote: “Waiting times are now over two years. Without
two appointments it is impossible to get and diagnosis of gender
dysphoria which allows simple hormones treatment.
“Hormones are regularly given to cis women by GPs but for trans
people we are having to wait over 28 months to get a prescription.
“This is then followed by approx. another two years before gender
surgery can be accessed. This leads to increased mental harm due to
frustration and being totally out of control of the treatment pathway.”
Gate keeping is killing us.
Doctors are gonna give a thousand reasons for this, all of which ignore that they could stop forcing trans people through unnecessary, stigmatizing and coercive diagnosis procedures, start giving us all access to hormones tomorrow and focus their remaining energy and budget on getting extra surgeons.
ForLoveFromFear 