The Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy said Malaysia’s healthcare system must ensure optimal access to services for transgender people, ranging from gender-affirming primary health services to trans-specific healthcare services.
Its senior fellow and SEED Foundation executive director Mitch Yusmar Yusof said this could only be achieved through active, concerted efforts to counter damaging stigmas and prejudice against the transgender community from within and outside the healthcare system.
“Failing to do so may result in public health concerns, suffering, harm and even deaths,” Mitch said in a statement.
SEED is the country’s first trans-led organisation.
There are an estimated 30,000 transgender people nationwide.
In the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), WHO said gender incongruence – previously defined as a “marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex” – had been removed from the chapter on Mental and Behavioural Disorders and reclassified as a sexual health condition.
In welcoming the revision, Mitch said the transgender community could finally validate themselves instead of having a psychiatrist define the community.
Mitch also said the revision reduced stigma against transgender people, and would facilitate social acceptance and ensure they are able to access the healthcare services they require.
“Pathologisation is a form of arbitrary discrimination against the transgender population. It kept us in a state of social marginalisation where we are humiliated and at worst, murdered.
“It acts as a breeding ground for prejudice, discrimination and hate speech against transgender people around the world,” Mitch said.
Pathologisation of transgender people, Mitch said, also proved to be a barrier in accessing a particular provision of healthcare, especially those specific to transgender people such as hormone therapy or gender-reassignment surgeries.
Depathologisation, Mitch added, may increase the availability and access to such health services for the transgender community.
“Depathologisation of transgender people makes us human, and says that we matter.”