Community News

U.K. Health Service Uses Economics To Determine SRS Availability

From Christine Burns/Press For Change

Several weeks ago in UKPFC-News I highlighted the blatant discrimination exhibited by Sheffield Health Authority when it published the recommendations of its Clinical Policy Purchasing Advisory Group. The policy is summarized by its' central statement:

...the purchasing of surgical treatment for gender dysphoria is considered very low priority for Health Service expenditure. Gender realignment surgery should not generally be considered for Health Service funding unless exceptional clinical indications could be demonstrated"

This all came to us, in fact, from a transsexual woman with the misfortune to be living in the Sheffield Health Authority catchment area .. who found, to her considerable distress, that a treatment recommended as necessary and therapeutic by the people treating her was suddenly going to be blocked by people whose primary concern is the administration of a budget, and whose priorities for that administration are set by uninformed prejudice .. epitomized by an inability to even spell the name of the treatment correctly.

It's a bit of a give-away, incidentally .. the term "gender re-ALIGNMENT" referred-to by the health authority's correspondence came into being last summer, as a seemingly deliberate piece of facetiousness by the right wing Daily Mail newspaper. To my knowledge, it's never been repeated elsewhere in print... except by Sheffield Health Authority.

So now you know how it's done. Forget all those years of training and examinations. Forget clinical judgement. Forget reason and compassion and cost judgement too. If you want to work for Sheffield Health Authority and make decisions about where OUR money is spent in the public health service, just make sure you read your Daily Mail every day.

Anyway, Sheffield HA's victim, Ruth, is not a woman to take NO for an answer. Not only has she enlisted the support of her local MP, Helen Jackson, but she's also taken the modern approach to ensuring that people who discriminate and obstruct aren't able to hide their actions in private correspondence. Ruth has published the entire saga on the world wide web. Ruth's next plan is to enlist the support of her local newspaper. The complete saga, as it unfolds on the web, makes an excellent example of the way in which transsexual people are no longer willing to take their abuse lying down.

From being soft and easy targets for discrimination, one official body after another is having to learn (the hard way, it seems) that people with the courage to manage one of life's most dramatic and challenging transitions will not allow ignorance and prejudice to stand in their way any longer. This comes about because transsexual people have, themselves, become more educated and aware of their circumstances.

This week on our campaign list, UKPFC-Forum, a new thread is beginning to trade ideas and experiences about tackling health authorities .. and how to ensure that that process of education and enlightenment occurs. The people in the Nottingham TG/TS group are there, for instance, to share their experience of how they brought about a new and more equitable policy within their own area.

Other people are comparing the inconsistent policies of Passport offices up and down the country, and resolving how to deal with them .. and in another thread there are ideas of how to campaign with PFC's free resource materials without going further than your post box and the local library.

You'll join the fight, won't you ?


UKPFC-News is a service operated by Press for Change, the UK's transsexual rights campaign. For more details of the campaign and the news behind the news, visit our web site.


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