Gender reassignment surgery is being evaluated by a government committee that will make recommendations on whether to offer it as part of the national health service.

“The advisory committee for healthcare benefits will be submitting its recommendations to the Parliamentary Secretary for Health for his consideration,” a secretariat spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said the advisory committee was looking into various options that included offering the surgery at Mater Dei for free or paying for treatment overseas.

Health Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne said gender reassignment surgery on intersex children (born with ambiguous genitalia) had been carried out on the NHS for a number of years.  Genital gender reassignment surgery, on the other hand, is not performed in Malta,” he pointed out, noting that this was what the committee would be looking into.

More on Times of Malta and the e-paper on timesofmalta.com Premium.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.