Since the out­break of the COVID19 pan­demic world­wide, for rea­sons that are still be­ing re­searched, the num­ber of deaths of British Sikhs, Mus­lims, Blacks and other eth­nic mi­nori­ties have been dis­pro­por­tion­ately high. This has prompted a re­port by British au­thor­ity -Pub­lic Health Eng­land. British Sikh MP Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi fo­cusses on the re­cently-re­leased re­port and seeks wide-rang­ing changes to ad­dress racial equal­ity in the United King­dom. WSN brings a sum­mary of the re­port and the speech of Slough MP Tan Dhesi.

PUBLIC OUT­CRY AND STRONG PAR­LIA­MEN­TARY IN­TER­VEN­TION by op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment in the British House of Com­mons forced the Boris John­son gov­ern­ment to re­lease the 69-page Pub­lic Health Eng­land re­port which says that as per the data col­lected by it, BAME -Black, Asian and Mi­nor­ity Eth­nic group of peo­ple, es­pe­cially health care and other front­line per­son­nel, are more sus­cep­ti­ble to Covid19.

The first tur­baned Sikh Mem­ber Par­lia­ment Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi, in a six-minute speech in the British Par­lia­ment, pointed out how he lost three dear ones to Covid19 and how it pains him to see that the Health Min­istry has not ini­ti­ated any prac­ti­cal steps to con­tain the spread of the deadly virus amongst all com­mu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing the BAME com­mu­ni­ties who are more vul­ner­a­ble.

Tan Dhesi forth­rightly stated, “Hav­ing lost loved ones to COVID, this for me is per­sonal. If BAME doc­tors and nurses are good enough to die on the front­line, surely they’re good enough to lead.”

“It is clear from dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers that COVID-19 in their view did not cre­ate health in­equal­i­ties, but rather the pan­demic ex­posed and ex­ac­er­bated long­stand­ing in­equal­i­ties af­fect­ing BAME groups in the UK.”

Seek­ing pol­icy change, the British Par­lia­men­tar­ian for Slough said, “Given the huge level of BAME deaths (es­pe­cially of health, care and other key work­ers), we need to ur­gently tackle the struc­tural racial in­equal­i­ties in so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing in our NHS.”

The Ex­ec­u­tive Sum­mary of the Re­port reads, “There is clear ev­i­dence that COVID-19 does not af­fect all pop­u­la­tion groups equally. Many analy­ses have shown that older age, eth­nic­ity, male sex and ge­o­graph­i­cal area, for ex­am­ple, are as­so­ci­ated with the risk of get­ting the in­fec­tion, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more se­vere symp­toms and higher rates of death.”

“The PHE re­view of dis­par­i­ties in the risk and out­comes of COVID-19 shows that there is an as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween be­long­ing to some eth­nic groups and the like­li­hood of test­ing pos­i­tive and dy­ing with COVID-19.”

“Hav­ing lost loved ones to COVID, this for me is per­sonal. If BAME doc­tors and nurses are good enough to die on the front­line, surely they’re good enough to lead.”

Tan­man­jeet Singh Dhesi, British Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment from Slough

The re­port ad­mits that “It is clear from dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers that COVID-19 in their view did not cre­ate health in­equal­i­ties, but rather the pan­demic ex­posed and ex­ac­er­bated long­stand­ing in­equal­i­ties af­fect­ing BAME groups in the UK.”

There has also been a dis­pro­por­tion­ate in­crease in the num­ber of deaths in the British Mid­lands. Wor­ried about the in­creas­ing num­bers, in April 2020, the Sikh Fed­er­a­tion had chided the Health Min­is­ter for not col­lect­ing re­li­gion-wise data and had pub­licly stated that, “Pub­lic bod­ies are in breach of the Equal­ity Act.”

As the sit­u­a­tion in Delhi, Mum­bai and Chen­nai is alarm­ing and is likely to get worse, Sikh ac­tivists won­der whether a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion ex­ists for mi­nori­ties-Sikhs, Mus­lims and Dal­its, in In­dia too. If it does, will have our very own SMDP -Sikh, Mus­lim, Dalit and Poor re­port into health in­equal­i­ties in In­dia?