Hormone therapy for trans people will now be free throughout Italy

The Emilia Romagna region has led the way in two resolutions of the Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) which extend the free treatment and guarantee of therapies to the entire peninsula, published yesterday in the Official Gazette

(photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images) People of Italian citizenship who want to start a transition path with surgery will receive the help of the state in resorting to hormonal therapies. The decision, unpublished for our country, is the result of two coinciding situations: the council of the Emilia Romagna Region, which implements a regional law on the subject of last year, and the publication in the Official Journal of an orientation text of the drug agency (Aifa) which establishes that these drugs are "paid for by the national health service".

After three years of behind-the-scenes consultations and negotiations with Aifa, through legal and medical representation, the Movement trans identity (MIT) and other lgbtq + organizations announced it on the morning of October 1st. The resolutions in the Official Gazette concern both testosterone, estradiol, estradiol hemihydrate, estradiol valerate, cyproterone acetate, spironolactone, leuprolide acetate and triptorelin.

For the MIT press release, this is a "great victory" for the movement and a further step forward for the "protection and guarantee of trans well-being and health", despite the fact that the debate on hormones in recent years has become increasingly "confused and distorted". A confusion that has hit the trans community in general, and exacerbated by events such as that of Caivano, as well as by certain discussions around the law against homotransphobia: with the result that conditions such as gender dysphoria continue to be misrepresented by the general public.

As Marco Tonti, coordinator of Arcigay Emilia Romagna, told Repubblica, the AIFA decision contributes to putting an end to "an era of arbitrariness in the administration of these vital drugs" and to "overcoming a regulatory situation that unfortunately still considers surgery the main point of reference ", finally validating the term transgender in the official terminology.

What is gender dysphoria

This term, still not very widespread in common jargon. , indicates a condition that fails to recognize itself in the biological sex attributed to birth. The Italian national legislation guarantees all people with dysphoria the possibility of receiving psychological support and medical assistance to start a path that leads to a change of personal and / or anatomical sex if deemed necessary.

Only l 'last year, however, the price of hormone therapy drugs such as Progynova had increased by 300%: a not negligible increase for those who in some cases have to take hormones even twice a day.

The primacy of Emilia Romagna

The regional law to combat homolesbobitransnegativity, approved in 2019, in art. 5 states that “the regional health service, the social assistance and social health services support and promote information, advice and support initiatives on specific issues involving gay and lesbian, transsexual, transgender and intersex people. The same initiatives are offered to parents and families ".

Starting from this premise, the Emilia-Romagna region has been guaranteeing "to residents the possibility of receiving drugs under strict control of the regional health service, according to the indications of prescriptive appropriateness established by the Regional Drug Commission ".