With effect from 3 April 2024, the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic repeals the Standard Procedure for Diagnostics and Comprehensive Management of Healthcare for an Adult with Transsexualism. The reasons arise from application and procedural practice, at a post-mortem stage of all medical interventions that clearly confirm the diagnosis of transsexualism and identification of the desired sex patient.
–It should be pointed out that we fully share the technical content of this standard procedure, which is supported by a huge team of professionals with many years of experience in adult care with transsexualism, said Minister for Health Zuzana Dolinková. This is also confirmed by the opinion of the European Psychiatric Association, which considers this standard procedure highly professional, taking into account the latest current knowledge of medical practice.
One of the reasons why the Ministry of Health proceeded to abolish this standard procedure is the fact that, although this is a specifically highly professional medical issue, it also has a significant ethical and social impact. In this context, we believe that the adoption of the standard has not been sufficiently communicated and justified by society, resulting in increasing problems and incentives for its implementation. This is the case for existing irregularities in administrative and technical procedures leading to an administrative change of sex in the register according to the relevant legal rules (e.g. Law 300/1993 on Name and surname and Law 301/1995 on Birth Number) in the sense of the Ministry of Interior.
We also consider it very important to highlight the fact that this standard procedure never applied to the child population, as it is necessary to look at this age category with particular regard. The standard procedure was intended solely for persons over 18 years of age.
In view of the above, the Ministry of Health will intensively initiate negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior in order to seek inter-ministerial coordination so that, once medical intervention has been completed, its correct legislative process will also take place.