Rio will have a service center for transgender and transvestite people.

From Agência Brasil

Rio de Janeiro – The first Comprehensive Health Center for Transvestites and Transgender Women and Men in Latin America will begin operating in June 2014 in the capital of Rio de Janeiro state. It will be located at the Piquet Carneiro Polyclinic, of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (Uerj), in the northern part of the city.

The announcement was made this morning (27), during the inauguration ceremony of the working group that will develop the project for the creation of the Comprehensive Health Center. Only four hospitals currently perform sex reassignment surgery in Brazil: in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and Goiás.

The coordinator of the Rio without Homophobia state program and superintendent of the State Secretariat for Social Assistance and Human Rights, Cláudio Nascimento, reported that the goal is for the Comprehensive Center to meet all the needs of the LGBTQ+ community.

"We will meet in the next two or three months to produce a set of guidelines that will guide the development of the center's implementation project. We will work to address issues of physical structure, aspects of service protocol, service routines, how to integrate the various areas of health, and also include citizenship perspectives because it is a totally discriminated population," he said.

According to Nascimento, the working group will still seek resources to adapt the Piquet Carneiro Polyclinic to meet the needs of transgender and transvestite people. "We are seeking partnerships. The state government will contribute a part, we will seek funding from the federal government, and we will seek support from international cooperation agencies," he emphasized.

The rector of Uerj, Ricardo Vieiralves, said that the Pedro Ernesto University Hospital, in Vila Isabel, in the northern zone, already performs sex reassignment surgery, but it cannot meet all the demand.

"It's a long process. There's a clinical evaluation, a psychological evaluation. It's not surgery that should be done carelessly. But we already have a waiting list of 850 people who have been authorized, who have already gone through this. That is to say, the demand is gigantic," said the rector.

Ricardo Vieralves further stated that, due to irregular hormone treatment, transgender people develop various illnesses. "Many transgender people use inappropriate products. This means, a derivation of cancer, a derivation of other types of diseases. There are psychological problems. There are problems with reintegration into the job market."

The idea for creating the Comprehensive Health Center for Transvestites and Transgender Women and Men arose during a public hearing on August 8th of this year, when the difficulties faced by the LGBTQ+ community in accessing public health services were discussed. The group was created through a publication in the State Official Gazette on November 11th.

João W. Nery, 63, the first transgender man in Brazil, who underwent surgery during the military dictatorship and is a member of the working group, explained that he had to completely change his life after the sex reassignment surgery.

"I spent 30 years in the closet because I was considered a criminal. Because after the surgery I couldn't go to court to change my name. I got a new identity card at a registry office, registered under one name so I could work. Because of that, I became illiterate, lost my diploma, my entire career. Today I don't have a pension," he said.