In a talk for health workers last night, NHS consultants claimed their employers and medical bodies are ‘silencing’ them on issues surrounding Palestine and the climate crisis.
Medical professionals shared their experiences of Palestinian event notices being removed from internal intranets, pro-Palestinian NHS workers suffering discrimination at work and doctors being struck off after becoming involved in activism.
Dr Diana Warner is one of three Bristol doctors who have been suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC) for having criminal records due to environmental activism. Warner questioned the ‘apoliticisation’ of medicine and healthcare and added: “Doctors have a professional responsibility to be concerned about the wider components of public health” such as racism and the climate crisis.
The racism experienced by Palestinians in the NHS was highlighted by Dr Thanos Tsapas, a consultant psychiatrist who visited Gaza in 2021. Tsapas said: “Anti-Palestinian racism is very common in the NHS, for example by the exclusion of people who advocate for Palestine in the workplace. There’s always a culture of neutrality”.
Dr Rania Ibrahim, a British-Sudanese Doctor, spoke about the racism ‘baked into’ the NHS and quoted recent research demonstrating ‘racist’ health disparities: “In the UK Black women are 3.7 to 4 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women. It makes me feel affronted just seeing that statistic”.
Ibrahim also highlighted the silencing of the war in Sudan, which has claimed a similar number of lives as the Palestinian war but has attracted almost no news or social media coverage: “It doesn’t get the same coverage because it’s an African war and Black lives don’t matter”.
Consultants spent the second half of the meeting discussing “how we can unsilence ourselves” and “empowering ourselves to speak up”, with NHS Consultant Dr Rachel Doves saying: “It’s so encouraging to know that I’m not alone”.
A spokesperson for the GMC said that doctors are entitled to “their own political opinions” and that the organisation’s focus is “on the effect that expressions of political or other personal beliefs may have on patients’ or public confidence in the profession.”
Similar issues have been raised at other NHS trusts, including at Barts Health NHS Trust, where a spokesperson said: “We are reviewing the policy to provide further guidance on the use of political symbols at work.”
