A gynaecologist at Reina Sofía Hospital in Murcia diagnoses a patient who came to his consultation as suffering from homosexuality. He has since rectified the record.
Santi, mother of the affected 19-year-old patient, demanded the Reina Sofía management team “read the reports before they are delivered to the patient. Because my daughter is very strong and this matter has not damaged her emotionally; but she can envisage a catastrophe for other more vulnerable people”.
Report rectified
“We have just left the Reina Sofía Hospital with the rectified report and they have asked us a thousand apologies,” says Santi. The gynaecologist diagnosed her 19-year-old daughter with a current illness of her homosexuality. He registered it in her clinical history, as denounced by Galactyco, the LGTBI collective of Cartagena.
The Murcian Ministry of Health previously apologised, attributing the diagnosis to an “error”. “Both the medical director and the director have apologized. They have offered me the possibility that the gynaecologist himself also speak with my daughter and that he give her his explanations,” Santi told elDiario.es.
Santi, was at the hospital in the Murcian capital. “We will look for a time to go with Alba, because she is at university in the mornings; but they have insisted a lot that it has been a very big mistake, but a mistake.”
Alba, who came for a proiomenorrhea, had difficulties being diagnosed and left the consultation crying.
“He asked if he could put that he was homosexual in the report,” says Santi, a request that surprised her daughter. “She agreed to it because she believed at the time that it was relevant information, because the doctor had had difficulties in the time to insert the ultrasound into her vagina”.
“These attitudes must be eradicated”
Alba told ElDiario that reading her homosexuality was a disease in the medical report was “unexpected”. “At first I laughed at it, but it’s not like that at all,” lamented the young woman. Despite the fact she did not take it badly, she considers another person could consider it an insult.
After reading the medical report that same day, she spoke with her mother and relatives to decide whether to report the situation. It was at that moment they decided to speak with Galactyco; “There cannot be such doctors, these attitudes must be eradicated.”
Galactyco demanded rectification and apology
Galactyco sent letters to the Ministry and the SMS demanding immediate rectification and apology to the patient. They also requested the application of Law 8/2016, on social equality of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgender and intersex. In health matters, the law commits the Government of Murcia to guarantee respectful treatment of LGTBI people. It also requires health professionals have adequate training and information on homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality and intersexuality.
“It was in 1990 when the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses. And yet 31 years later, in the Murcian Health System, some professionals continue to assume sexual orientation as a disease.” The LGTBI collective Galactyco assures there are already “numerous cases of humiliating treatment that reach our association due to sexual or gender orientation. We consider alarming, unacceptable and intolerable that to date the professionals on whom an adequate treatment of our health depends ignore the realities of LGTBI people”.
