Sex change woman to bring treatment fight before UN
Tuesday August 14 2001
Diane Hughes from Macroom, Co Cork, formerly Richard Hughes, is now officially a woman after completing a detailed course of drug treatments and surgery.
Her UN action follows a landmark legal triumph in which she sued the Southern Health Board over contributions towards the cost of her gender change treatment.
Diane, received £5,000 as part of a settlement with the SHB for her gender-change treatment.
"This is a tremendous victory for transsexuals throughout Ireland," she told the Irish Independent.
"I believe it now establishes a national precedent and a benchmark against which other people who wish to undergo these treatments can gauge their right to financial support," she added.
However, the British-born woman plans to take Ireland to the UN over the refusal to financially-assist such treatments on an automatic basis and the fact that gender-change individuals will always be known by their original sex on documents such as birth and death certificates.
Diane's case against the SHB followed her decision to proceed with the sex-change course in Britain and pay for it from her own resources. Irish health boards have, to date, argued that such treatments are voluntary and non-urgent medical procedures.
- Ralph Riegel
