Neel is one a Trustee member of Sappho for Equality. He’s a trans man living with his queer kins and feline partners, who give him the strength to live against all odds. He loves to explore and often wishes to run away to snow capped mountains to reconnect with his own self.

Neel on ‘Trans Masculine experiences with healthcare from the East’ (edited, in the speaker’s words):

I’m from Kolkata and my organization, Sappho, works with trans men in Kolkata and its surroundings. There are various types of challenges and issues we face.

One is that of knowledge and information outside the community and even within the community, like most trans men do not even know about the process of transition, and they end up paying a lot of money to doctors.

Last year, a trans man paid a huge amount of money in exchange for three major surgeries at a go -- all the surgeries were supposed to be done within three weeks or one month, including the most complicated surgery like phalloplasty.

It was a life and death situation for him because the surgeons could not operate properly. Somehow he managed to post it on Facebook and that's how we got to know about the situation.

Then the community members from the state transgender board, intervened in the situation, and found that the doctors never had such experience in handling these gender-affirming surgeries.

Then we got in touch with some experts in Mumbai and conducted virtual meetings and that's how we could save this person. This trans man is not from Kolkata, he comes from a village in one of the districts in West Bengal.

Similar things have happened in the past. And we feel the need to make guidelines on good practice in 2017. Sappho conducted a series of meeting with healthcare professionals involved in gender-affirming treatments including psychiatrists, endocrinologists, surgeons.

We published the ‘good practice guidelines’ report on gender-affirmative care in 2017 and presented it to the state government for further implementation but haven’t received any positive response from their side.

Continued: https://www.pixstory.com/story/challenges-in-accessing-healthcare-for-trans-people-who-havent-started-transitioning-neel1652172617/99461