Assessment of Quality of life among Transgender Populations in a Metropolitan City of West Bengal, India: A Cross-sectional Study.

INTRODUCTION: Transgender is an umbrella term used to define individuals whose gender identity or expression differs from the culturally bound gender associated with one's assigned birth sex (i.e., male or female). Transgender individuals belong to a marginalized population; they experience widespread prejudice, discrimination, violence, and other forms of stigma. They suffer from various diseases like HIV and STIs/RTIs. This study was conducted to assess quality of life and the factors associated with it. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 120 transgenders in a Community-Based Organization (Kolkata Rista) for a duration of 1 year (January-December 2023) using a pretested predesigned structured schedule containing WHOBREF_QOL. Data were collected by the face-to-face interview technique and analyzed with Microsoft Excel 2019 (Redmond, Wahington, USA) and SPSS v.26 (IBM, New York, USA). RESULTS: Among 120 participants, nearly half (51%) belonged to the age group 18-30 years; 98.3% were assigned male as their gender after birth. WHOQOL-BREF assessment revealed that more than half (57.5%) had overall poor quality of life. Additionally, 52.5% had a poor physical quality of life, 58.3% had poor psychological quality of life, 70% had poor social relationships, and 64.2% had poor environmental health. CONCLUSION: The majority of them had multiple sexual partners; they indulged in anal sex followed by oral sex. Almost everyone had addiction; one fourth were addicted to smoked tobacco. The majority of them had overall poor quality of life. Awareness generation with the help of the Institutional Ethics Committee, social media, posters, and use of condom can improve their quality of life.