Yasser Jamal, head of the Sex Correction Center at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, has said that he has a three-year waiting list for sex correction surgery. Speaking to Al-Hayat last Friday, Jamal added that he had conducted approximately 400 sex-correction operations in the Kingdom for persons of a variety of nationalities, emphasizing that the surgery treated “inter-sex” issues and other physical defects. “I do not do surgery on conditions of ‘lost identity' that do not involve physical defects,” he said. “Procedures to change the sex of males or females who want to belong to the other gender are prohibited in Shariah Law and we don't do it,” he said. According to Jamal, health complications requiring gender correction “usually appear shortly after birth”. “About 93 percent of patients who have undergone the operation have been two years old or under,” he said. “The oldest to have had it done at the hospital was 38.” Jamal also said that treating persons according to their new gender status following surgery was essential for their peace of mind.“A different attitude toward them may harm them psychologically and deny them a peaceful life with the rest of society,” he told Al
