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Health care expansion UMCG and VUmc too little too late

VUmc

Today, 17th of May 2017, the gender teams of VUmc and UMCG came with the joyful announcement that they will expand their treatment capacity for transgender health care recipients. Amsterdam met 20%, Groningen with 100%.

Principle 17 is pleased that this happens, but also regards it as ‘too little, too late’. Even with the capacity expansion there will still be substantial waiting lists for the time being. Amsterdam has in recent years doubled from about 150 registrations in 2008 to a 300 in 2015, and is expanding by 20%. Groningen doubles the capacity, so they are able to accommodate 80 health care recipients per year in the future, instead of 40. Both clinics could have seen this coming, and could have intervened earlier.

It is also not clear where the expansion will take place, and whether the bottlenecks will be solved effectively.

Principle 17 is of the opinion that there are still enough points left where the health care needs to be extended and changed:

  • capacity expansion instead of reduction
  • free choice of practitioner
  • decentralisation of transgender health care
  • introduction of informed consent approach
  • introduction of cultural competence training on transgender for health care providers

We do have indicated this in our petition to the Lower House Committee of HWS. However, neither the minister nor the gender teams wish to actively intervene in the process and to ensure the health care rights of transgender people.

Today 27 years ago, on 17th of May 1990, homosexuality was removed from medical and psychiatric classifications. Transgender is still there. For how long?

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