KOCHI: The High Court on Tuesday directed the National Medical Commission and Under-Graduate Medical Education Board to consider and decide on a representation filed by the queer community seeking to revise medical textbooks and curriculum. The community had sought the removal of unscientific data and derogatory references against transgender people and sexual minorities from medical textbooks.
The court issued the directive while disposing of a petition filed by Queerythm LGBTIQ Community Kerala, and Disha -- NGOs working for the sexual minorities. The petition stated that the references in the textbooks prescribed for medical courses termed the queer community’s sexual or gender identities as an offence, mental disorder or perversion.
This despite the Supreme Court recognising such persons’ rights and decriminalising homosexuality. The curriculum formulated by the commission and the education board portrays queer and sexual minorities in an inhuman manner. Homosexuality, transvestism, and transsexuality are termed as abnormal sexual behaviours in the textbooks and are described as psycho-sexual patients needing careful handling, they stated.
The petitioners pointed out that they had already given representation to the commission and the board for removing these terms from the medical textbooks. But no action has been taken.They stated that the volunteers of the NGOs pursuing their undergraduate medical education had expressed their pain and agony while studying the textbooks which stereotype their sexual or gender identities. These descriptions of sexual minorities and transgender directly amounted to a discriminatory social attitude and contributes to stigmatisation faced by the gender and sexual minorities, said the petition.