Derbyshire health chief demands better care for BAME residents

Ifti Majid is the chief executive of Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which specialises in mental health support across the county and city.

Mr Majid has previously spoken out about how he and his fellow BAME colleagues have often been treated while carrying out support in hospitals and in their “civilian” lives.

He has also spoken about what he says is ‘blatant racism and abuse’ that is often faced by BAME health staff.Paired with this is the inequality of support for patients from a BAME background and the heightened risk to BAME patients from certain illnesses – including Covid-19.

Although the threat the virus poses is said to be free from discrimination – affecting anyone and everyone – it has proven to have a more adverse impact on black and minority ethnic residents.

Mr Majid said: “Discrimination and inequality cost lives.

“As healthcare leaders we have to act on the evidence that too often health outcomes and satisfaction for BAME communities, service users and staff fall significantly below those of the white community.

“Not being racist is not enough.

“We must be wholeheartedly anti-racist, applying evidence-based approaches, and hold ourselves to account for delivery.

“The time for discussion is at an end and urgent action is now required to end discrimination of all kinds.

“Leaders have a responsibility to set the tone in respecting others, respecting difference and valuing diversity.

“As healthcare leaders, we can either help anchor our communities or contribute towards destabilising them.

“We must make every effort to end the direct and indirect discrimination that BAME communities face.

“Office of National Statistics data published last month showed that – even taking into account age, measures of self-reported health and disability and other socio-demographic characteristics – people from a BAME background are more likely than those of a white ethnic origin to experience serious complications from contracting Covid-19.”

The trust, based at Kingsway Hospital in Derby, has 330 BAME staff – each of whom has been given a covid-19 risk assessment by the organisation.

These are to be reviewed on a monthly basis.

It is also hosting hundreds of video calls and weekly virtual meetings for the organisation’s BAME staff network to provide further support and to raise concerns.

Hospital trust leaders have said the number of people dying from Covid-19 in Derby and Derbyshire is broadly in line with the local resident and staff population.

Dr Magnus Harrison, the trust’s executive medical director, said: “Our death rate among black, Asian and minority ethnic groups is completely in line with our population statistics as a whole.

“Between 89 and 90 per cent of the people we see dying from Covid are caucasian British which is more or less representative of the population we represent in Derby and Derbyshire.”