Objective

Identify the barriere that transgender and transsexual people have in accessing health services.

Material and methods

A descriptive study was carried out based on a review and analysis of published evidences of quantitative and qualitative studies, in the period from 2005 to 2019 in English and Spanish. The search was conducted using keywords to identify access barriere in the transgender and transsexual population. The results were classified according to the main access barriere in different analytical categories of barriere: economic, organizational, geographic and cultural.

Results

According to the search in the databases analyzed, 230 articles were found, of which, after reviewing the titles and abstracts, 200 were excluded because they were not related to the study phenomenon. After reviewing the full text of the remaining 30 articles, 22 of them were excluded for the following reasons: 16 for not analyzing the study phenomenon and 6 for not expressly including the population under study. Finally, 8 articles were selected. It was pointed out that health professionals have uncertainty when dealing with transgender and transsexual people, coupled with poor academic training. Transgender and transsexual people mention stigma and discrimination as the main barrier, as well as the limited information that health professionals have about this community.

Conclusions

Although there is evidence of geographical and financial barriere to access to health services for transgender and transsexual people in Mexico, the main barrier of problems and challenges are cultural barriere accompanied by socio-cultural stigma for this population community.