With closure of three USAID-funded transgender clinics, community looks to Centre for support

The transgender community in India is facing a major setback following an order from the Trump Administration to freeze USAID funding, which has led to the shutdown of three healthcare centres that were serving around 5,000 transgender individuals across the country.

A senior official at the Mitr Clinic in Hyderabad, a healthcare centre exclusively for the transgender community, confirmed that services at all three centres, located in Hyderabad, Thane and Pune, ceased on January 24, following a notice from USAID. Until then, these clinics were catering to nearly 5,000 registered transgender clients, offering essential services for various ailments.

“We have told our patients that the clinic has been temporarily shut. Meanwhile, some of the patients are even informally contacting the doctors. Those with serious conditions like HIV are being referred to other hospitals and NGOs specialising in HIV treatment,” the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Tribune.

In January 2021, a USAID-supported programme, implemented by Johns Hopkins University, launched India’s first comprehensive healthcare centre for the transgender community in Hyderabad. The Mitr Clinic provided a wide range of services, including general health care, hormone therapy guidance, mental health counselling, treatment for HIV, legal aid and social protection services—all in a “stigma-free” environment. The clinic’s staff, including doctors, counsellors and outreach workers, were all from the transgender community. Due to the success of the Mitr Clinic, two additional clinics were established in Maharashtra later that year.

However, the Trump Administration’s executive order in January to freeze USAID funding for a 90-day review process has disrupted these essential services. Although a waiver was issued for humanitarian programmes, the impact of the freeze has resulted in the closure of the Mitr Clinics in India, which were crucial for the transgender community.

According to the 2011 Census, the total population of “others” in India, a category that includes transgender individuals, is 4.87 lakh. This category represents those who wish to record their sex as “others,” including transgender people.

Dr Aqsa Shaikh, a transgender woman doctor and Professor of Community Medicine at Jamia Hamdard in Delhi, emphasised the urgent need for India to step in and create an ecosystem that provides life-saving services to transgender individuals. “The model of clinical care for the transgender community was created by the community itself, including trans healthcare workers and was supported through US funding,” she said. “Now that the US funding has stopped, the need and passion remain. It’s up to the Indian Government, which believes in ‘sab ka saath, sab ka vikas,’ to take the Indian trans community along, fund, and scale up this model. We need ‘atma nirbharta’ in transgender healthcare too,” Dr Shaikh added.