Five British soldiers had paid-for therapy, counselling too

LONDON - Britain's army is paying for its soldiers to have sex-change operations, according to London's Sunday Times.

The newspaper report comes hot on the heels of a confession by the defence ministry made earlier this week that it had paid for women soldiers to have breast enlargement operations.

The ministry said on Sunday that it had allowed up to five members of the armed forces - believed to be men - to have sex-change procedures carried out by the country's taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS).

Duties of the sex-swapped troops were reported to be downgraded before their operations.

But a spokesman said the ministry's medical services did not have their surgeons conduct such operations. Interested soldiers were, instead, referred to the NHS.

''If members of the armed forces want that done, they will go on the NHS waiting list,'' she said.

''We don't have the surgical expertise to be able to do gender re-assignment operations.''

But the hormone therapy treatment linked to the operations may be dispensed by regimental medical officers, ''in which case, we would pay for that'', she said.

According to the newspaper, the five soldiers are currently being treated with hormone therapy and counselling, which are paid for by the army.

NHS also required those who wanted such operations to ''spend time living the life of the gender they want to be re-assigned to'' before undergoing the procedure.

And the army does ''allow them to do that'' and has ''provided the drugs and other support'', said the spokesman.

She added: ''We feel that military personnel should be neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by being in the services, so if they get this treatment...in civvie street, we try to make it available too.'' While the ministry said the number of personnel who had such operations was ''no more than five'', it declined to give an exact number.

''This is a tiny percentage out of over 200,000 members of the armed forces,'' the spokesman said.

A recent change in army rules means that soldiers who undergo sex changes do not automatically have to leave the services, though in practice most do.

Last week, the ministry admitted that it had paid for breast enlargements for four female soldiers since the start of last year, saying they were not done on purely cosmetic grounds but for psychological reasons.

And sex changes and breast enlargements aside, the ministry also confirmed that ''about 10'' members of the armed forces had been given free liposuction.

The Sunday Times, which first reported that soldiers were able to have sex-change operations, said one soldier had liposuction to his waist after he put on weight and his uniform ''started to chafe''. - Wires