TRAVESTIS E TRANSEXUAIS NO SISTEMA PÚBLICO DE SAÚDE: OBSTÁCULOS IMPOSTOS PELA REALIDADE BRASILEIRA

Abstract

Health is a right constitutionally guaranteed to all citizens, but access to it varies greatly in the experiences of specific social groups. Even though the Unified Health System was built on the premises of universality, equity and comprehensiveness, transvestites and transsexuals still face obstacles in accessing very basic rights and services. The objective of the study is to demonstrate that transphobia and transvestitephobia function as insurmountable barriers, which prevent these people from enjoying even the rights expressly provided for in existing norms while the State fails to seek the efficiency of its policies and the fulfillment of the rights that ensures. The bibliographic review used literature on the subject, regulations in the health field, official documents and data produced by civil society research in order to verify whether these obstacles arise from the absence of standards or discrimination that prevents these standards from being met. This work analyzes what has been produced about the history of the relationship between transvestites, transsexuals and public health in Brazil. It then gathers and organizes data produced by previously published research that investigated the difficulties that these people identify in accessing public health services in specific regions of the country. Finally, the perceived result is that viable measures historically highlighted by the social movement as alternatives to combating these exclusions have already been adopted by health regulations and have not resolved the current problems.