“Sandrena” is the drug most used by transgender women for hormone therapy, helping them take estrogen and develop their feminine characteristics. Its gel formulation also makes it one of the safest options as it is able to guarantee constant levels in the blood and has no impact on the liver, unlike hormones taken orally. However, Sandrena is no longer available for free. The Italian Medicines Agency (Aifa) has reclassified the drug, downgrading it from reimbursement class A to class C. This means that the drug, previously free thanks to the National Health Service (SSN), will now be fully paid for by the patient. Each box will cost 18.50 euros and will remain available at the expense of the NHS only as part of a therapeutic plan. The reclassification request was made by the pharmaceutical company responsible for Sandrena, Orion Corporation. And the transgender community is now in turmoil because it denounces the AIFA's decision.
Drugs
Transgender people who undergo hormonal treatment to align their physical characteristics with their gender identity, which does not correspond to their biological sex, must take this type of medication daily for their entire life. In October 2020, medications used for hormone therapy were officially included among the services covered by the National Health Service, following two AIFA resolutions considered historic by the LGBTQIA+ community. However, the recent decision to reclassify Sandrena and make it patient-payable has sparked a strong backlash from trans activists, who see the move as a direct attack on the transgender community and a step backwards from the progress made previously towards equal access and free hormones. therapy for transgender people.
The complaint of the Trans Identity Movement
“Since Sandrena, among its uses, is one of the most widely used estrogenic drugs in the context of gender-affirming hormonal pathways, we cannot hide the doubt that this approach constitutes yet another attack against trans people,” says the Trans Identity Movement, the first association founded in Italy to protect the rights of trans people. “We cannot help but think that this is another example of personalist and political management of public health, to which the Meloni government is accustomed us. A government which, to contaminate with its policy all the workings of the National Health System, had the courage to appoint a technician at the head of the AIFA, sent there to also transform this organization into a company serving economic interests”, they continue. “All this after having already renamed the Bioethics Committee in his image and likeness, making it a long-standing mania of government policies. With these premises and after the shameful punitive expedition against Careggi, the suspicion that the decision to reclassify Sandrena was motivated by evaluations of a transphobic nature becomes for us almost a certainty”, they conclude.
Read also:
