Last week we had two people in one
of the Trust's that I work in die,
both of them were quite young.
And then yesterday a doctor who I'd met
at medical school had passed away.
It really hit me and it hit a lot of my friends
as well who went to med school together.
Because we all remember him as this
kind-hearted, jovial, smiling consultant,
and he wasn't just really compassionate
with the patients,
but he took the time speak
to medical students.
He was 51 it's not okay, it's not
okay that we are losing,
health care professionals like this.
We know that more can
be done to protect them,
and to stop these unnecessary
lives being lost,
and is something very difficult
to come to terms with.
The statistics that we've seen are
shocking but to be honest not surprising,
health inequality is not a new phenomenon
in this country both in the UK and US.
We know that people of colour ethnic
minorities have poorer health outcomes,
face greater barriers
accessing health care,
and we know they're at greater
risk of premature deaths.
Your physiology to a large extent is determined
by the social world that you're born into.
so your social and your economic
circumstances and your exposures.
That's why your postcode that your born in
is a large predictor of your life expectancy.
The racial inequalities that we see among
your health outcomes very much mirror,
those social and economic inequalities.
And of course their social economic
inequality stem from racism.
It's really important that we understand
that race and ethnicity,
they are social constructs but the
consequences of racism are biological.
For example we hear
people talking about,
the reason why more people of
colour are dying from coronavirus,
is because they have more underlying
health problems and that is true.
We know that black people and Asian people
are more likely to have heart disease,
more likely to have hypertension,
more likely to have diabetes.
The reason why that is is because
with all those conditions,
your social factors, your diet,
your ability to eat healthy food,
your ability to exercise, your stress levels,
all contribute to your risk of various diseases.
And then on top of that there
is research to show that,
people who are experiencing everyday
daily acts of discrimination or racism,
that is an independent risk factor
for having high levels of obesity,
higher levels of cortisol, higher blood
pressure which are then,
all of them risk factors for
diabetes and heart disease,
which all put you at risk
of dying from coronavirus.
The housing conditions are really
important and we know,
that people of colour and BME people
these people are more likely,
to be living in overcrowded housing
in poor quality housing,
and again we have to be
thinking about why that is?
And then I think we also
really need to think about,
why is it that people of colour and BME
people are over-reliant on insecure work,
on precarious work on the gig economy
and are more likely to be in low paid jobs.
The irony of this is that these
so-called low paid jobs,
the care sector, our transport workers,
out Uber drivers, our porters,
our cleaners right now in the hospitals
they have now become the key sectors,
and are having to continue to
work during this pandemic.
Right now apart from one, all
of the doctors that have died,
have been from the Asian
community or are black.
There are a lot of reasons behind this
BME people within the NHS,
are more likely to face bullying at work
are more likely to be complained about,
and their purported that's more difficult
for them to speak up in the workplace.
And I've been contacted by people over
the past few weeks talking about;
that they don't have protective equipment
at work and that they've felt they've been,
forced to go into high risk situations
without adequate protective equipment,
all of them have been people of colour.
So I do think there's a correlation here
between not having protective equipment,
and BME workers putting themselves
more at risk and putting themselves,
in the situations where they can get the
virus without adequate protections,
and not being able to speak out
or being shut down when they do.
If we look at other areas where they've done
work into racial disparities in health care,
Black women are five times more likely to
die in childbirth than white woman.
Predominant factor around this is is that,
black women say that their symptoms
and when they're in pain,
and not being taken
seriously by clinicians.
We know that this racism
in health care exists,
and it's frankly not that surprising then
that people of colour may be less likely,
to have their health conditions well
looked after and well controlled.
Something I want to make clear is that
I don't believe that doctors and nurses,
are going to work and saying that I want
to treat black people differently,
or I want to treat Brown people
differently, that's not the case.
But we all have our own bias whether
that's from the media, from the culture,
from your environment,
whether it's conscious or not.
So I do hope coming from
this that it is a reflection,
that all of us and as a society take a step
back and reflect on how migrants,
and people of colour are keeping
this country alive right now.
Whether it's working in our NHS
or working in our care sector,
or working in the gig economy
as our delivery drivers.
But also I think we need to take
a step further back than that,
and actually think about
the history of the Empire,
and the history of how this country
became wealthy and how our prosperity,
as a country has been very much
reliant on people of colour,
from previously colonised countries.
and we have become rich
as a country from that.
So I do think there needs to be a
reassessment of our values there,
and how we see ourselves as a country.
What we need to be doing now
is seriously addressing,
the structural racism and the inequality
that exists in our society.
And we need to be holding to
account the people in power,
who've allow these inequalities and this
injustice to persist for so many years.
At a time like this we need Double
Down News and alternative media,
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