India's first three clinics serving transgender people closed last month after US President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day suspension of aid from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which funded them.

Rachana Mudraboyina, a trans woman, had been working for four years as a health consultant at one of the facilities, the Mitr (Friend) Clinic in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, when she received an unexpected call in February telling her that, due to the near-total freeze on foreign aid, she no longer had a job.

The other two Mitr clinics, in the western cities of Thane and Pune, which also relied on the USAID funding, were shut down as well.

The Mitr facilities provided advice, legal aid, medication and counseling related to hormone therapy, mental health issues, as well as HIV and other STIs, to more than 5,000 patients.

More than 2,000 people were registered at the Hyderabad facility, India's first clinic for transgender people, said Mudraboyina.

"We have been receiving calls from the patients who are desperate since there is no other facility to help the community around here," she told DW, adding that most of the center's running costs were funded through USAID.

Mudraboyina and her patients........

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