By MACHUA KOINANGE

Kenya: Stakeholders will hold a meeting next week to develop guidelines on sex change operations, Medical Practioners and Dentist board CEO Daniel Yumbya has revealed.

 The Wednesday meeting will constitute a technical working committee to help the board draw up guidelines to be forwarded to the Attorney General’s office. Currently, doctors are prohibited from performing gender change operations.

 The Medical Board Code of Professional Conduct and Discipline states: “Gender reassignment is not permitted on demand.  The specialist attending to the patient with gender problems shall constitute a team of specialists whose decision would be based on anatomical and special needs of the patients but whose decisions must be based on the right to health and other fundamental rights in the Constitution.”

Representatives from the Kenya Psychiatric Association, the transgender community, Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenya Psychiatric Association, Law Society of Kenya and the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, National Christian Council of Kenya (NCCK) and Supkem among others, will be at the meeting.

 Dr Yumbya also warned a doctor who performs a sex change operation would lose his practising licence.

“Cap two of our medical code of ethics prohibits gender re-assignment. Gender operation is not permitted on demand,” he said.

 The board wrote to the stakeholders in October last year inviting proposals on guidelines to be forwarded to the AG with a view to clear the air over the way people with Gender Identity Disorder are treated by the medical profession.

Legal operation?

Yumbya said while some stakeholders have come with suggestions on the subject, others have not.

But Trans-gender Education and Advocacy  (TEA) programme Director Audrey Mbugua, who has spent the last four years trying to have a gender change operation, says the board and Government are moving slowly to address the needs of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) victims.

 “TEA had made contributions to various Government organs on the issues. Most of them do not take us seriously. We want all the bills and laws touching on GID passing through the CIC to be vetted by stakeholders and members of the public,” she says.

 There are many issues that worry Mbugua, including that no GID victims can legally have an operation in Kenya. What’s more, GID is classified as a mental health issue, which means many victims are referred to Mathari Mental Hospital for help.

But sources said staff at Mathari are not trained or prepared to deal with GID. Beyond prescribing depression pills, many victims leave the hospital without a longterm solution.

 Said Mbugua: “For the last 4 years, we have requested the Medical Practitioners and Dentist Board to recognise there was Gender Identity Disordes in Kenya and there was a need to create medical guidelines for treatment of transsexuals to stem hostility and ad hocism in the provision of its treatment. The Medical Board took up the initiative and on the October 17 last year, the Government requested for contributions from various stakeholders to feed into the guidelines.”