No report of sex-change surgeries in Indore, says top officer

Indore: Indore District Chief Medical and Health Office (CMHO) on Monday denied that there was any official report about sex-change operations being performed on normal children in the city hospitals, and questioned the feasibility of such a procedure.

A national daily had reported that such operations were being performed in Indore every day, at the behest of parents who favoured a male child.

The CMHO, Dr Sharad Pandit, told PTI on Monday that following this, he had called a meeting of all the paediatric surgeons working in the private hospitals, and sought a report on "plastic surgeries related to undeveloped genital organs" in the respective hospitals. The meeting would be held soon.

"There are about ten such hospitals where plastic surgery is performed on children suffering from undeveloped sex organs. There is no government hospital in Indore where such surgery may be done under the rules of the Medical Council of India," Dr Pandit said.

"In a healthy and normal child (girl or boy), sex change is never done or possible. How could Indore's private surgeons do it?" he said.

But saying that he had asked for more information from private hospitals, Dr Pandit added it would be premature to make further comment on the subject.