Post by Ayla on Jan 10, 2016 5:35:24 GMT 8
Serbia's cheap medical tourism industry has attracted trans people from across the world—but local trans people find themselves left out in the cold...
Belgrade has somehow become a global hub for gender reassignment surgery. The Transgender Law Center reports that surgery in the US can cost between $5,000 to $50,000; in Serbia, you would expect to pay between $4,335 and $10,839. Around a hundred trans people travel to the Serbian capital every year, drawn by the irresistible combination of low prices and high levels of expertise.
A hundred patients might not seem like a particularly noteworthy figure, but this isn't a common form of surgery. According to the Washington Post, only around 100 to 500 people are operated on yearly in the US. Only 143 operations took place in the UK in 2009. In global terms, Serbia's medical industry punches far above its weight, and its reputation is so renowned that Cher's son Chaz Bono even declared that he wanted to go to Belgrade for gender reassignment surgery a few years ago.
"If we're going to talk about medical tourism, don't forget that every other form of operation is cheaper here than in the rest of the world," Dr Miroslav Djordjević says from his desk in a cramped examination room at the University Children's Hospital. One of Serbia's leading gender reassignment surgeons, he leads the Belgrade Center for Genital Reconstructive Surgery. "If you want to operate [on] your gallbladder, that's a cheap operation here—15 times cheaper than in America—but nobody comes here for that. The reason they come here is because of the quality that we offer, the operating techniques that we pioneered and advanced to the point where patients say, 'I want to go to Belgrade.'"
Besides the cheap medical bills, Belgrade's doctors are best known for their mastery of female-to-male surgeries, which are more complicated (and as a result, less widely available) than its inverse operation. Djordjević claims that the degree of medical expertise is so high that surgeons here have condensed what would be several lengthy operations into a single six-hour procedure, sparing patients the physical and mental stress of being operated on multiple times. Djordjević regularly flies out to perform operations in hospitals as far afield as Japan and the US, and estimates that trans men make up 80 percent of his foreign patients.
"I decided to go to Belgrade for several reasons: first, Miro is a urologist and most of the other surgeons are plastic surgeons," one of Djordjević's US patients told me over email. "What I needed was the ability to urinate from my penis, not just something that was aesthetically pleasing. I made contact with four doctors, three in the USA and one in Belgrade."
He only received one direct response from a US surgeon; the others directed him to their online application processes. The Belgrade Center responded immediately. "Miro and I made arrangements to meet in the USA. He saw me and he spent close to four hours with me, reviewing my history and answering my questions. He saw me as an individual, he spoke and treated me with the utmost respect."
He was known to pull patients off the operating table mid-operation, because these were private procedures done in state clinics outside of working hours...
The global medical tourism trade has a slight cowboy reputation—everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody whose aunt flew out to Thailand for a boob job, only to return with what appeared to be the contents of two cans of Spam soldered to her back. Djordjević says that what sets the Belgrade team apart, aside from their "enthusiasm" and intrinsic "humanitarianism," is the strict regulatory procedures that they have in place.
A patient can't simply wire the cash and book a procedure—they first need to complete a year of preliminary mental assessment, in which they are examined by both psychologists and endocrinologists, followed by six to 12 months of hormone therapy before they are finally led into the operating theatre. Foreign patients must prove that they've gone through equivalent testing in their home country.
"For us, patients aren't simply a source of revenue that'll be operated today and forgotten tomorrow," Djordjević says. "We stay in contact with them and insist that they stay in contact with us so we can follow them and get reliable information to draw conclusions on our results, successes, or failures. And that's the difference between us and one of the 50 hospitals in Thailand that perform this sort of surgery."
broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/how-a-homophobic-country-became-a-go-to-spot-for-gender-reassignment-surgery
Belgrade has somehow become a global hub for gender reassignment surgery. The Transgender Law Center reports that surgery in the US can cost between $5,000 to $50,000; in Serbia, you would expect to pay between $4,335 and $10,839. Around a hundred trans people travel to the Serbian capital every year, drawn by the irresistible combination of low prices and high levels of expertise.
A hundred patients might not seem like a particularly noteworthy figure, but this isn't a common form of surgery. According to the Washington Post, only around 100 to 500 people are operated on yearly in the US. Only 143 operations took place in the UK in 2009. In global terms, Serbia's medical industry punches far above its weight, and its reputation is so renowned that Cher's son Chaz Bono even declared that he wanted to go to Belgrade for gender reassignment surgery a few years ago.
"If we're going to talk about medical tourism, don't forget that every other form of operation is cheaper here than in the rest of the world," Dr Miroslav Djordjević says from his desk in a cramped examination room at the University Children's Hospital. One of Serbia's leading gender reassignment surgeons, he leads the Belgrade Center for Genital Reconstructive Surgery. "If you want to operate [on] your gallbladder, that's a cheap operation here—15 times cheaper than in America—but nobody comes here for that. The reason they come here is because of the quality that we offer, the operating techniques that we pioneered and advanced to the point where patients say, 'I want to go to Belgrade.'"
Besides the cheap medical bills, Belgrade's doctors are best known for their mastery of female-to-male surgeries, which are more complicated (and as a result, less widely available) than its inverse operation. Djordjević claims that the degree of medical expertise is so high that surgeons here have condensed what would be several lengthy operations into a single six-hour procedure, sparing patients the physical and mental stress of being operated on multiple times. Djordjević regularly flies out to perform operations in hospitals as far afield as Japan and the US, and estimates that trans men make up 80 percent of his foreign patients.
"I decided to go to Belgrade for several reasons: first, Miro is a urologist and most of the other surgeons are plastic surgeons," one of Djordjević's US patients told me over email. "What I needed was the ability to urinate from my penis, not just something that was aesthetically pleasing. I made contact with four doctors, three in the USA and one in Belgrade."
He only received one direct response from a US surgeon; the others directed him to their online application processes. The Belgrade Center responded immediately. "Miro and I made arrangements to meet in the USA. He saw me and he spent close to four hours with me, reviewing my history and answering my questions. He saw me as an individual, he spoke and treated me with the utmost respect."
He was known to pull patients off the operating table mid-operation, because these were private procedures done in state clinics outside of working hours...
The global medical tourism trade has a slight cowboy reputation—everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody whose aunt flew out to Thailand for a boob job, only to return with what appeared to be the contents of two cans of Spam soldered to her back. Djordjević says that what sets the Belgrade team apart, aside from their "enthusiasm" and intrinsic "humanitarianism," is the strict regulatory procedures that they have in place.
A patient can't simply wire the cash and book a procedure—they first need to complete a year of preliminary mental assessment, in which they are examined by both psychologists and endocrinologists, followed by six to 12 months of hormone therapy before they are finally led into the operating theatre. Foreign patients must prove that they've gone through equivalent testing in their home country.
"For us, patients aren't simply a source of revenue that'll be operated today and forgotten tomorrow," Djordjević says. "We stay in contact with them and insist that they stay in contact with us so we can follow them and get reliable information to draw conclusions on our results, successes, or failures. And that's the difference between us and one of the 50 hospitals in Thailand that perform this sort of surgery."
broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/how-a-homophobic-country-became-a-go-to-spot-for-gender-reassignment-surgery