U.S. Taxpayers Spend $355,825 To Reduce Stigmatization Of India’s Transgenders

U.S. Taxpayers Spend $355,825 To Reduce Stigmatization Of India’s Transgenders – CNS

The federal government is spending $355,825 in taxpayer dollars to develop a “culturally relevant stigma-reducing intervention” program for the transgender population in India.

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Bindiya Rana, right, a transgender candidate in Pakistan’s elections, talks with locals in Karachi, Pakistan

The National Institutes of Health issued a two-phase grant to the Ohio-based Baldwin-Wallace College to conduct the study. The first phase cost $173,221. The second phase cost $182,604.

The reason given for the study is “HIV prevalence is disproportionately high among Male-to-female transgenders (Hijra) in India.”

“Stigma among health care providers limits HIV testing, treatment and care and creates a barrier to HIV protective behavior,” the project summary says. “Stigmatization of transgender by healthcare providers has been documented, and is identified as a significant barrier to effective HIV prevention responses among this marginalized, at-risk population in India. However, evidence based interventions to reduce stigma and discrimination among health care providers are seriously lacking.”

The title of the study is “Project Shakti: Stigma Reduction, Health Care Provider Awareness and Knowledge.”

CNSNews.com asked an NIH spokesperson several questions, including, “Since this study focuses on India, what is the benefit to the U.S.? Why is it worthwhile to U.S. taxpayers?”

In a written response, the NIH told CNSNews.com only, “NIH research addresses the full spectrum of human health across all populations of Americans. Behavioral research will continue to be an important area of research supported by NIH.”

The NIH referred back to the project summary for any other comment.

The funding for the project ends in August.

“The proposed project will address this need by developing a theory-based, culturally relevant stigma-reducing intervention targeting health care providers in Mumbai, India,” the NIH project summary says. “The proposed multidisciplinary US-India collaborative research team with significant HIV/AIDS research experience will implement a two-year formative study to develop and pilot health-care provider-focused stigma reducing intervention.”

The project summary continues, “The study has three specific aims: 1) Document cause and manifestation of stigma among health care providers in Mumbai; 2) Use the information to design a provider-focused intervention module, and obtain community feedback; 3) Pilot the revised intervention module among 50 healthcare providers, and assess its feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effect on health service behavior among healthcare providers. These data will prepare the team to conduct a large scale randomized controlled trial in India.”

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Horror At Mass Sterilization Camp In India As Women Are Dumped Unconscious In A Field After Painful Operation

Horror At Mass Sterilization Camp In India As Women Are Dumped Unconscious In A Field After Painful Operation – Daily Mail

Dozens of women were abandoned unconscious in a field after being sterilized at a rural health center in India.

Two doctors carried 106 sterilization operations in a single day at government-run Manikchak Rural Hospital in West Bengal as part of mass ‘health drive’.

The patients should have been kept under observation for at least three hours, but with only 30 beds at the hospital reserved for women, they were left on the pavement with no medical assistance or protection against infections.

As many as 110 women were dumped on an open field for hours after a mass sterilization program in West Bengal’s Malda district

The doctors at the government-run hospital are now under investigation and at least one health officer has been suspended.

The ill-equipped hospital has a total of 60 beds, only half of these are available to women, the rest to men.

The hospital’s two doctors – Dr Amal Krishna Pal and Dr Joydip Majumder – carried out the procedures on over 100 women with the help of a gynaecologist, Dr Purnendu Rang, who was called from the nearby Ratua rural healthcare center.

The sterilization drive broke a number of rules regarding health and safety procedures, drastically overstepping the limit of 25 sterilizations per day and ignoring the three hours of observation.

After the surgical procedure, the doctors asked the helpers to move every patient to the adjacent field, a majority of the women were still unconscious.

Disgrace: The image show women lying in a field outside the hospital with no medical aids and with only their relatives to help

The patients were carried out and casually dumped under the open sky in the hands of their relatives. Unable to bear the pain in the absence of proper care, some of them fainted.

Many of the patients were sent off on rickshaws, though they were not in a state to make any journey.

A district health official said the hospital has no ambulance.

‘We all know there is a severe risk of morbidity during sterilization and the question whether this has been taken care of or not,’ health activist Ratnaboli Ray told NDTV.

One of the patients, Pinki Mondal of north Chandipur village, fell off the rickshaw as it collided with a matador. She was rushed back to the center with critical injuries and was referred to the district hospital.

Risk: The images from NDTV show an unconscious woman being lifted onto a blanket outside the hospital after her surgery

No care: Hospital workers have lifter a woman off a stretcher and are placing her on the pavement, leaving her unaided post-surgery

Local health officials acknowledged that the patients’ treatment was shockingly insufficient, and a full report has been requested from the hospital.

Malda’s chief medical officer of health (CMOH), Bidhan Mishra, said: ‘We have come to know about the incident. It is not acceptable. We have ordered an inquiry and asked the hospital authorities to submit the report in the next 48 hours.’

Mishra, however, claimed that the Manikchak health center has six doctors, including Dr Rang.

Bengal’s women and child development minister Sabitri Mitra, who is also the local MLA, said: ‘This irresponsible act will not be tolerated. The CMOH is looking into it and necessary action would be taken.’

Mitra said a section of doctors were deliberately trying to malign the government’s image.

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Spiders vs Indian town

A TOWN in India has suddenly been overrun by swarms of venomous spiders, leaving two people dead after they were bitten.

It may sound like a B-grade horror movie, but residents of the town of Sadiya, in Assam state, say that on the evening of May 8 as they were celebrating a Hindu festival swarms of spiders suddenly appeared and attacked them, The Times of India reported.

Over the next few days two people – a man, Purnakanta Buragohain, and an unnamed school boy – died after being bitten by the spiders. Scores more turned up at the town’s hospital with spider bites.

Local resident Jintu Gogoi spent a day in the hospital complaining of excruciating pain and nausea after being bitten. He said weeks later his finger was still blackened and swollen.

District authorities are also panicking – and they are considering spraying the town with the insecticide DDT.

Locals say the most terrifying aspect is that spiders appear in swarms and their behavior is highly aggressive.

“It leaps at anything that comes close. Some of the victims claimed the spider latched on to them after biting. If that is so, it needs to be dealt with carefully. The chelicerae and fangs of this critter are quite powerful,” head of the department of life sciences at Dibrugarh University Dr. L.R. Saikia said.

Teams of Indian arachnid experts have flocked to the town, hoping to identify the species, but so far they have drawn a blank.

They say it could be a tarantula, a black wishbone or even a funnel-web spider – or it could be a whole new species.

One thing they agree on is that it is not native to the area as there is no record of venomous spiders in Assam. The black wishbone and funnel-web are native to Australia.

There is over the top rhetoric, then there is this guy

Only Chris “Crazy Legs” Matthews could come up with this much absolute inanity!

Suddenly one day we’ll find ourselves like Greece or Ireland or Portugal, one of those countries at the periphery of the strong economies — Germany, China, India. Suddenly we’ll be one of those countries that the strong world looks at with disdain, looks down on really. We’ll become objects of pity, pity not for what was done to us like on 9/11, but for the pathetic sight of what we’ve done to ourselves.

Yes, if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, it’ll be a greater horror for our country than the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, and 9/11.

Even worse, we might become the MSNBC of the International Community. Now THAT would be truly sad.

Girls As Young As ONE ‘Forced To Have Sex Change Operations In India’

Girls As Young As ONE ‘Forced To Have Sex Change Operations In India’ – Daily Mail

Girls as young as one are being forced into sex change operations in India by parents desperate for a son.

Surgeons in the city of Indore are reported to be ‘converting’ hundreds of girls a year, who are subsequently pumped full of hormone drugs.

A report in the respected Hindustan Times newspaper said the ‘shocking, unprecedented trend, catering to the fetish for a son, is unfolding at Indore’s well-known clinics and hospitals on children who are one to five years old.

Operations: Doctors in the city of Indore, in India, are said to have carried out hundreds of procedures to turn girls into boys

‘The process being used to ‘produce’ a male child from a female is known as genitoplasty.’

Indian society places a strong value on producing a son and heir, with daughters often seen as an expensive burden to be married off.

Sex determination tests during pregnancy are illegal in India to try to prevent the common practice of women choosing to abort female foetuses.

In some states such as Punjab the ratio of women to men has dropped as low as seven to ten.

Wealthy parents from Delhi and Mumbai are reportedly flocking to Indore, a city in the centre of India, for the relatively low cost £2,000 treatment to surgically ‘correct’ their daughters.

News of rampant abuse of the surgery – normally used to correct genital abnormality in fully-grown patients – led to a furious backlash on Twitter and other social networking sites on Sunday.

The author and feminist Taslima Nasreen led the outrage, tweeting: ‘Shocking! Not only do people kill unborn girls, they turn girls into boys by genitoplasty.’

She added: ‘Doctors who practice illegal Female Foeticide & Genitoplasty should get life in prison.’

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights today announced it had asked the state government of Madhya Pradesh to investigate the doctors and the hospitals named in the report.

Parents have allegedly pressed for the surgeries despite being told by doctors that the ‘converted’ male would be infertile.

The procedure involves doctors ‘building’ a penis using tissue from female organs, with the child then being fed hormonal medicine.

Seven genitoplasty experts in Indore boasted each of them had turned 200 to 300 girls into ‘boys’ so far, with only one being older than 14, the legal age of consent to such an operation.

Doctors claimed the operations were performed on children whose internal organs do not match their external genitalia – most commonly, girls born with some internal male organs.India has no system to monitor that claim.

‘When the child grows up, he or she would be confused about the gender he or she belongs to. This surgery can stop the child from having sex-determination disorder and psychological problems,’ said Dr Milind Joshi, a paediatric surgeon who performs the procedure at a city hospital.

A parent whose child underwent such a surgery at the age of two told the Hindustan Times on the condition of anonymity: ‘I think my child would not be confused over his gender when he grows up and can live a normal life as he would not have any memories of the surgery.’

Another Indore paediatric surgeon performing the procedure, Dr Brijesh Lahoti, said, ‘In India, there is no problem in performing these surgeries as only the consent from parents and an affidavit is required.

These are reconstruction surgeries where sex of the child is determined based on its internal organs and not just on the basis of external genitalia.’

With no proper laws to protect rights of the child that young, the practice might have a larger social ramification, say medico-legal experts.

‘The surgery can have profound, long-term psychological effects on an individual, who might not accept the gender assigned by parents and doctors before age of consent,’ said Suchitra Inamdar, a counsellor from Mumbai.

Calling it a highly sensitive issue, Dr Joshi said people should be sensitised about these surgeries.

Asked about consent of the child, he said, ‘In India, consent is sought from parents till the child is 14.’ This raises a lot of questions about rights of these children, who might grow up to believe that they wanted to be the way they were born and not corrected surgically.

‘The Medical Council of India and the health ministry should look into the matter. There has to be some guideline or law on how a child who is barely old enough to talk can undergo a life-changing surgery at the parents’ will,’ said IMA secretary, Indore branch, Dr Anil Bhadori.

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Bride Discovers ‘Husband’ Is A Woman

Bride Discovers ‘Husband’ Is A Woman – Orange News

An Indian woman lived with her ‘husband’ for a year before finally discovering that ‘he’ was really a ‘she’.

Minati Khatua, 26, of Rourkela, says she and her family were completely taken in by Sitakant Routray, 28.

“He had impressed everyone in my family and they willingly agreed to our marriage,” she said.

Minati Khatua

As is traditional in India, Sitakant received a substantial dowry including an Indica car, gold ornaments and more than £350 in cash.

But Minati grew suspicious after the wedding when Sitakant avoided any physical contact on the pretext of a religious vow.

“I would try hard to find out and confirm his gender but failed repeatedly,” she told the Calcutta Telegraph.

“However, one day I managed to force open the bathroom door when he was having a bath. My worst fears came true. He was a woman.”

Inspector Jyotirmaya Hota confirmed that police were investigating the case.

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Tom Friedman explained

Silverfiddele lays into Friedman’s inane views about as well as anyone ever has!

Cosmopolitan Liberals are Un-American 

It’s not just the statist policies that have discredited the Democrats.  It is their mindset, and Thomas Friedman is exhibit A for why we should pry their grimy mitts from the levers of power.

Citizen of the world Thomas Friedman writes breezily about sipping tea with third world potentates at his country manor, while advocating that we the unwashed be divested of our suburban homes to be herded into crowded city centers, all in the name of enviro-statism.

Regularly extoling the virtues of totalitarian regimes like China, this New York Times sophist represents the very worst America has to offer.  Last week, he posed a typical stupid question.

Can China balance Freedom and Prosperity?
(Friedman – NY Times)

It’s a nonsensical question. You can’t balance one against the other.  History shows they are inseparable.  Freedom and prosperity sit at the same end of the teeter totter. What China is really trying to do is to balance these noble aspirations against state-sponsored tyranny.

Great analysis, go read it all, you will be gald you did

Time to freak out over Pakinstan’s nukes?

I wondered yesterday what America would do if the Taliban got close enough to threaten taking control of Pakistan’s nukes. Well that time is getting too close for comfort.

The Taliban takeover of Haripur would put the Taliban on the doorstep of Islamabad and would also put two major nuclear facilities at risk.

Haripur borders the Margala Hills, a region in the Islamabad Capital Territory. Haripur also borders the Punjab districts of Attock and Rawalpindi.

Attock hosts two major nuclear facilities in Pakistan: the Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex and the Kamra (Minhas) Airbase. The Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex host three sites where nuclear weapons and components are stored and assembled and aircraft and missiles are modified for use in nuclear attacks. The nearby Kamra Airbase is thought to host attack aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Rawalpindi is the “garrison” city for Pakistan’s military. The city hosts the headquarters of the Army and Air Force, and several nuclear weapons research facilities are also located there.

There are lots of players here, India, obviously would be a target, as would our troops in Afghanistan. No doubt America would have to move to secure the nukes, and what if India decides to send its military in?

Hot Air has lots more on this and many more questions to ponder.

I remember reading last year somewhere that the Pentagon has emergency contingency plans to seize Pakistan’s nukes if things go haywire, but I’m naively hoping against hope that Zardari and the military leadership will voluntarily surrender them to keep them out of jihadi hands if they think they’re about to be overrun. Obama would have to guarantee Pakistan’s security against an Indian nuclear attack, though, and even then national pride might stop them from giving up the bomb — assuming, that is, that the leadership still has sufficient control over the military to get them to carry out an order like that. A horrifying possibility here is that there are Taliban sympathizers among the Pakistani troops safeguarding their nuclear arsenal. The more leverage the jihadis get, the greater the risk of defections.