[continued]

I was started on a combination of antibiotics which I didn't need. It was only another friend and doctor who was a radiologist, who knew and pointed out that what the treating team was doing was wrong.

I felt that if I'm someone who is a teacher, who is a doctor in this hospital, who is famous, who is known, who is openly trans, and in spite of that, that it can happen to me, then naturally it can happen to any trans person, especially those who are less privileged.

We started this conversation when I was associated with Amir, Satendra, Anant -- we were working on a project, and were like, 'We need to do something about it.'

That conversation led to writing this project, and that's how we started the journey of TransCare. While this is my personal experience, I'm sure there are thousands of such experiences.

That is why we started this work on trying to find out what kind of barriers trans people face when accessing healthcare. And I'm really happy to say that in less than two years, the amount of work that we're doing has evolved and has grown gradually.

Now we have an umbrella under which we do our work in the marginalized communities, especially with transgender people, and people with disability. It's called iHEAR initiative -- initiative for health equity, advocacy and research.

It involves doing community-based participatory research; advocacy for the rights of community members; doing capacity building for committee members and for people who want to serve the community; creating inclusive and safe spaces for the community members.

We have academics, researchers, activists, and also allies, who are part of the team. Now, it's very important that when we do work in the communities, that we do it with them, and we involve the community in every stage.

That's why the iHEAR projects bring together community members, and when I say community members, the community is not a single block: there's a lot of diversity and intersectionality within the community.

Continued: https://www.pixstory.com/story/we-dont-want-to-just-publish-in-lancet-unless-ground-reality-of-trans-people-changesdr-aqsa1652120836/99364