India’s first medical clinic for people who think they are “transgender” shuttered after President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development.
According to the BBC, Mitr Clinic was started in 2021 in Hyderabad. It offered “HIV treatment, support and counselling services to thousands of transgender people,” the outlet reported.
It didn’t stop there. Two more Mitr Clinics in Thane and Pune opened the same year. They have also been shut down.
This happened because of DOGE (via BBC):
In January, Trump signed an executive order pausing all foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review.
Trump has said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his "America First" approach.
[...]
In India, the shutting down of the Mitr Clinics has impacted the transgender community's access to crucial medical support.
A staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity to BBC Hindi said the three clinics catered to some 6,000 people and about 6% to 8% of the patients were being treated for HIV.
"All these cases were below 30 years of age. And 75 percent to 80 percent of this population was accessing health services for the first time," a staff member told BBC.
Reportedly, in Hyderabad, the Mitr Clinic provided care to 150 to 200 transgender patients a month. Most of them had HIV. The BBC claimed that India has about two million transgender people.
Musk responded to the news of the Mitr Clinics shutting down on X.
“That’s what American tax dollars were funding,” he said.
That’s what American tax dollars were funding https://t.co/E4IQSoj9NV
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2025
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