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Being transgender is not a mental condition, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced.
At the same time, stroke will be treated as a neurological condition and not a circulatory disease, following advocacy by players who wanted improved medical interventions and accurate data on deaths.
WHO has released a new catalogue of diseases expected to inform key decisions on how countries address health conditions.
The International Classification of Diseases dated June 18, has categorised transgender as a sexual condition, a newly formed category.
Transgender is when one has an inconsistency between their experienced gender and their assigned sex at birth. It usually happens when one has an imbalance of oestrogen hormone (that regulates female growth) and testosterone, which regulates development of male features.
In Kenya, activist Audrey Mbugua, born Andrew Mbugua, is the most vocal case of transgender.
Dr Lale Say, from WHO’s department of Reproductive Health and Research, said the main purpose of removing transgender from mental conditions category is to reduce stigma that has been associated with it.
These new changes will be presented at the WHO’s World Health Assembly session next year, where they will be adopted by member countries, Kenya included.
In the ICD catalogue published in 1948, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder, which WHO explains was under the assumption that it was a personality disorder since people were deviating from the norm.
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