UZ Ghent under fire: daughter referred for mastectomy within a week

In De Morgen, a Flemish father tells a story that leaves little room for doubt about the speed at which minors in UZ Ghent’s gender clinic are steered toward medical interventions. After a single psychiatric consultation, his daughter was told she qualified for a mastectomy. A week later, she was on the operating table. No lengthy process, no second opinion, no room to change her mind — a decision with lifelong consequences, made within the time most people need to choose a new washing machine. What regret after such an intervention can mean is described in a case study on genderzorgen.nl.

This story does not stand alone. Belgian politicians and doctors have been pointing for some time to the speed at which vulnerable girls with gender dysphoria are treated under the current model, while underlying issues such as depression, autism or self-harm are barely investigated. Vlaams Belang has raised the alarm in parliament and is demanding an independent review of the Flemish gender clinics, an end to subsidies for gender centres and a moratorium on medical transition for minors — instead, psychosocial support should take priority.

Not the first time

The case at UZ Ghent is not new. The names Aero, Nathan and Melody had already emerged: young people who died by suicide after undergoing transition treatment, after which their parents filed complaints against the clinic. The fact that such cases continue to pile up, while the waiting list for the gender clinic has grown explosively over the same period, raises the question of whether the service can still process the influx with due care — or whether speed has gradually become the norm.

Dr Patrick Vankrunkelsven, head of the Belgian Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (Cebam), bluntly calls puberty blockers “chemical castration” and advocates stopping the treatment in favour of psychosocial care. Child psychiatrist Peter Adriaenssels is also calling for greater caution. Neither is an outsider with a political agenda; both are doctors who, from within their own fields, observe that the scientific basis for the current model is thinner than the affirming narrative would have us believe.

A minister voicing her doubts

Notably, the responsible minister, Caroline Gennez (Vooruit), is also not shying away from the criticism: she acknowledges that transgender healthcare is a young field about which too little is still known, and that more research is needed. The fact that such an admission comes from a minister belonging to a party that generally does not present itself as critical of the affirming model says something about how difficult the UZ Ghent case has become to defend with the usual reassurances.

For families dealing with a gender-dysphoric teenager themselves, the lesson from this story is not that every referral is rushed — but that trusting a clinical pathway should never be automatic simply because it is a hospital. Asking for a second opinion, insisting on a longer diagnostic period and having underlying problems ruled out are not acts of obstruction, but precisely the careful work required to justify an irreversible intervention in a minor. A critical discussion of another article from the same newspaper can be found in De Morgen misses the mark.