Intersexuality: What Public Health Personnel Should Know and Do to Protect and Preserve Persons Born with Intersex Variations’ Human Rights and Citizenship Rights in Tanzania

Intersexuality includes a variety of conditions in which individuals are born with, or develop later in life, ambiguous external genitalia and or a combination of chromosomes, gonads, external genitalia, and hormones that do not align as typical male or typical female. Persons born with intersex variations, therefore, are real and exist in all countries around the globe. What is missing in most countries like Tanzania is the comprehensive understanding of who persons born with intersex variations are; their (health) needs; the parents/guardians’, families’, communities’ experiences and governments’ roles in recognizing and protecting human rights and citizenship rights this group is entitled to. Low awareness and understanding of persons born with intersex variations among the general public, policy makers and the (public) health professionals; lack of empirical research on this group and intersex-LGBTQ confusion explain, in part, why there is paucity of data on this population in Tanzania and other countries mainly where LGBTQ is illegal. Data presented in this paper come from desk research I conducted on intersexuality in Tanzania and beyond. I conclude public health experts in this country stand a better chance to bridge gaps identified in existing intersexuality research to enable Tanzania realize demands and calls made by The African Intersex Movement, 2017. I recommend public health intersexuality research to move towards a psycho-social framework which accepts persons born with intersex variations, because the problem is not with this population; it is, rather, with the society expecting them to conform to their socially constructed architypes.