Wednesday July 14th, 1999

Transsexual faces 15-year wait for operation

Clare Dyer, Legal Correspondent

A transsexual who has been approved for a sex change faces a wait of up to 15 years to get the operation on the NHS.

Krystyna Haywood, from Sheffield, has been told that the psychiatrist in her area who assesses cases and refers patients for operations sees only one new transsexual patient a year and she is number 15 on his waiting list.

Sheffield health authority insists that Ms Haywood, 30, must go through the formal assessment even though she has already fulfilled the requirements though private treatment to be referred for an operation.  An office manager with the disability charity Reclaim, she has been having hormone treatment for more than four years and been living as a woman for more than two.  Her private psychiatrist, Russell Reid, has told the health authority that an operation was of “high clinical priority”.

But the authority will not pay for her to have the operation, which can cost up to £9,000, until she is first assessed by its specialist in psychosexual problems, Kevan Wylie.  He is contracted to spend only 14 days a year on transsexual patients.

Ms Haywood said: “I can’t have a relationship.  Sheffield health authority is denying me a decent quality of life and expecting me to wait years.  I’m 30 now, but at 45 what sort of life will I have ahead of me? I’ll have missed out on 15 years.”

She has also seen an NHS psychiatrist who referred her to Dr Wylie, saying there were no reasons why the operation should not go ahead.

Frances Pitt, consultant in public health medicine, said the health authority would not refer Ms Haywood for the operation without seeing Dr Wylie because that would allow her to use her earlier private treatment “as a way of getting round waiting lists”.

Sheffield had rated sex change operations a low priority because it had to take a balanced view on the use of limited resources.

Sheffield’s policy on treatment priorities had been set by a sub-committee.  “We believe what we have is an equitable system where people know what they can expect.”

There might be opportunities in the future “for releasing resources from one bit into another.  I don’t envisage she’ll be waiting 15 years.”

Health authorities must be careful not to operate a ban or virtual ban on sex change operations after a high court ruling last December that North West Lancashire health authority acted unlawfully in refusing operations to three transsexuals.  The judge said the authority had acted without consideration of what was “the proper treatment of a recognised illness”.

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