Why we need to do more to put an end to racial discrimination in the medical community!

As a result of a long history of slavery and discrimination against the BAME community, it could be said that there is a lot of mistrust towards the medical community.

Not only in history books: Today, we still see the effects of historical discrimination. According to statistics black women are 4 times more likely to die during childbirth than their white counterparts. We could put this down to coincidence, however its not just in childbirth that we see a disparity in the way some races are treated.

Many black and ethnic minorities with jobs in the health care and medical industry have experienced some form of discrimination. Some of the reoccurring issues include being denied promotions or being bullied and harassed with no support from the NHS to tackle these issues.

In an ITV interview, Professor Rotimi Jaiyesimi who has worked in the NHS for more than 30 years recalls his experience of racisms in the early 90’s. He describes a time where a senior consultant said to him “you’re a good doctor but there’s something about you that you can’t change” and then pointed to his skin.

He says, although racism today is more covert there is still a marginalisation of black staff in the NHS. He also says that the problem is there are not enough black representatives high up in the ranks to see to it that this sort of discrimination does not occur.

A 2019 report by the NHS Confederation found that only 8% of chairs and non-executives of the NHS trust that were not white, nearly half of what it had been the previous decade.

Discrimination of any kind should not be tolerated. We need to more to prevent racially inequality in our hospitals.

This evening we will have a community discussion on medical discrimination please join us via the zoom link https://lnkd.in/g6uefAk with the ID code Meeting ID: 818 9171 6189 Passcode: 206037.