Deep racism in NHS: Govt. review

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JUNE 25. A week after an independent study reported deep racism in Britain's National Health Service (NHS), once dependent almost entirely on immigrant nurses and doctors, a government review has confirmed this, according to The Guardian which today carried extracts documenting specific cases of racial harassment and discrimination.

The report, it said, showed that at least half the frontline staff from ethnic minorities were victims of racial harassment last year. They also faced racial abuse from patients and public. ``It would be safe to conclude that racial harassment is still a pervasive phenomenon in the NHS, largely unrecorded with little action taken to solve the problem or give redress to those affected,'' the document said. It indicated that racial difficulties in the NHS were far more serious than previous reviews had suggested and things were getting worse resulting in a decline in the recruitment of nurses from ethnic groups. Though the NHS remains the largest employer of ethnic minorities, the rising graph of racial prejudice is believed to be discouraging them from joining it. Many see the NHS as a ``hostile place in which to work, to receive care or treatment, or to visit your nearest or dearest - not at all in line with the cherished universal institution of national folklore.''

The Guardian said the report, marked ``confidential'', was commissioned by the Health Department and though delivered to the Government last autumn, it remained ``officially under wraps''. Meanwhile, a study by the King's Fund last week came out with a damning indictment of race relations at the NHS. The official document, according to The Guardian, paints a ``bleak picture of black and Asian staff being abused by patients, ostracised by colleagues and passed over for training and promotion by middle managers who rarely took complaints of harassment seriously.'' It quoted non- white doctors who complained that they were bypassed for promotion, nurses who alleged they had been abused and at least one white surgeon who was suspended after she apparently tried to protect a Nigerian trainee from racist abuse.

``(White) patients have asked me not to touch them or look after them,'' one black nurse said while another alleged that she was called names and told to ``get out of the U.K.'' ``You are alienated subtly and isolated from their social circle,'' said another non-white staff member. Indian doctors said though they had passed the same examination as their British counterparts, yet they were not given promotion even as doctors from E.U. countries were.

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Section  : International
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