The B.C. government recently announced that lower gender-affirming surgeries would be coming to British Columbia but they also announced that upper/chest gender-affirming surgeries would be offered in more communities, including Prince George.
The news is welcomed by many in the Northern Health region, including the Prince George Pride Society.
President Sue Trabant calls it a major win for the province.
"This is a major win for our queer community, for our trans community," she says.
Laura Heinze, manager of media relations and issues for the Ministry of Health, tells Prince GeorgeMatters in an email there are more than 500 people in B.C. waiting for chest or breast surgeries.
Twenty referrals (four per cent) are from patients who live in the Northern Health region. Currently, Prince George has one surgeon doing these procedures: Dr. Anastassi Halka. He has been practicing in Canada since 2015 and completed his fellowship in Toronto and became interested in gender-affirming procedures in 2010.
Other cities with improved access to top surgeries include Burnaby, Kamloops, Port Moody, Vancouver and Victoria. A total of 14 surgeons will be available to perform the procedures starting next year.
"We're lucky here in the north too because they're opening this (lower surgeries) in Vancouver, we still have the Northern Health bus system that can also get people down south, " says Trabant.
Prior to the announcement, anyone wanting a lower surgery had to travel to Montreal or out of country.
"The major issue with the surgeries being in Montreal is they're covered by medical, but you have to pay to travel out there and it's very expensive and you have to stay until you heal," she says. "Once you got back to B.C., there was no specialist here to be able to look after you if there were any complications. So now, what this means, is we're right here in our home province and Western Canada can way more easily access this."
While there have been many positive responses to the announcement, Trabant also acknowledges there are naysayers.
"If you don't want to access the surgery, it doesn't mean anything to you. But for those people who want to or need to access these surgeries, this is going to be a major forward move in terms of medical care," she says.
There is also a stigma surrounding these operations, with some critics saying the procedure is "elective" and should not take priority over hip replacements or knee surgeries.
Trabant says it's much more than that.
"Let's just be clear that gender-affirmative surgery is not an elective surgery," she says. "For some people, this is life or death."
The health ministry says 200 chest and breast surgeries are expected to take place throughout B.C over the next year.
