Vietnamese turn to black market hormones

Ho Chi Minh City: Every week, Huynh Nha An faces the same dilemma: spend her paltry salary on food, or buy the black market hormones she needs to keep her facial hair from growing back. Born male but desperate to change sex, the timid 21-year-old self-prescribes and injects drugs bootlegged from Thailand — when she can afford them. “When I don’t use hormones regularly I turn back into a boy, I’m no longer smooth like a girl,” explains the street food seller and part-time singer. Nha An is one of thousands facing the same problem in Vietnam, where hormone therapy and sexreassignment surgery are not legally available to transgender people. That forces many to selfmedicate despite the serious health risks. The transgender community endures discrimination in many parts of Vietnam, a communist-controlled country where conservative social mores dominate. But in a rare act of social progression, the government is writing a law that will allow people to officially change their gender. That could result in better access to healthcare for Vietnam’s 300,000strong transgender community, but it will not become law until 2019 at the earliest. Until then Nha An will have to get along without specialist medical help, relying on friends for advice on the dosage and frequency of her hormone injections. Some months she spends nearly half her $100 income on the drugs, or borrows from friends — her family stopped giving her money after she ran away from home. “My parents still see me as a diseased person, they don’t accept me as a girl,” she said. ‘I still have a scar’ For trans women like Nha An, it’s tough to find estrogen and progesterone under the table in Vietnam, which is why she buys drugs brought in from Thailand.