A consultant at King Faisal Specialist Hospital (KFSH) said people who have undergone gender reassignment surgeries need help adjusting to their new lives. He suggests a charity be created to help patients adjust. Dr. Bassam Bin Abbas, Consultant Endocrinologist at KFSH, said a charity consisting of mental health professionals be established to examine the problems faced by gender reassignment surgeries, according to an Al-Watan report Friday. Gender reassignment is often conducted on newborn children who are born with underdeveloped sexual organs. Abbas said about one in every 5,000 children are born with adrenal gland difficulties, which require the patient to undergo a gender reassignment or sex change operation. Official statistics are unavailable due to social taboos about the topic in the Kingdom. Many times individuals who feel they are emotionally different from their physical characteristics, known as gender dysphoria, undergo surgery to change their gender. He said many gender reassignment surgeries are performed when a patient is very young. “It is best to perform sex change surgeries at an early age to avoid any psychological or negative effects on patients”, he said, Over the last 5 years Abbas said more than 600 people have undergone gender reassignment surgeries in the Kingdom. “These individuals have transgender problems. In the case of females, some do not have sex organs and are unable to conceive despite having a uterus. As for men who have changed into women, social taboos may doom them to a life of spinsterhood,” he said. Abbas said many people who have gender reassignment surgeries have difficulty adjusting to their new lives because their families do not approve which is why the charity organization he suggested has vital importance. He said the charity would function as a therapeutic organization helping those who are experiencing problems both with themselves as well as the society at large. Nagi, a 30-year old teacher, says that he underwent sex change surgery 15 years ago because he was misdiagnosed as a girl at birth. “I never felt like a normal woman and I never had a menstrual cycle. Therefore, when the physician told my family that the reason for this is that I was born male, the bottom of the world fell out”, he said, Nagi and his family went overseas to have the surgery performed to avoid social taboos. When he came back, he said, he was never able to adjust properly because people looked down at him. When he eventually found a school he enjoyed working at, his story was revealed by a family friend. He was humiliated and he resigned, Nagi said. Nagi was so disparaged by the experience he stopped working altogether and is seeking psychiatric help. Social taboos have harmed some more than others. Samia: Formerly Salem has been divorced three times over the last five years because she said none of her husbands understood her problem stemmed from a misdiagnosis of her gender at birth. After she underwent her surgery to change her gender, she said her family rejected her lifestyle change, except for her mother. Khaled, a 22-year-old Saudi is having difficulty finding a wife but he also has to deal with the looming debt of SR200,000 for his surgery. “My colleagues know better than to make me angry because they are worried I might spill the beans on the secrets their sisters told me when I was a woman,” he said laughing. In 2007 Brazil began providing free gender reassignment surgery, according to the New York Times. Brazilian judges ruled that the surgery should be covered as part of a constitutional clause guaranteeing medical care as a basic right. Brazil's public health system offers free care to all Brazilians.
