FIRST & FOREMOST ASIAN WEEKLY IN EUROPE
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Let noble thoughts come to us from every side
20 - 26 JUNE 2020 - VOL 51 ISSUE 7
RACISM CONTRIBUTES TO BAME DEATHS
Britain’s Indian community slams ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters for vandalism SEE PAGE - 9
Nepal House approves new map; untenable, says India SEE PAGE - 25
Priyanka Mehta & Rupanjana Dutta A new study has found that racism and social inequality have contributed to the increased risk of black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (BAME) contracting and dying from Covid-19. On Tuesday 16th June, Public Health England (PHE) finally released a complete report confirming that disproportionately higher number of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) individuals died of Coronavirus. The complete report was released as Asian Voice went to press and after it emerged that some pages were missing from the original review published last week. Besides highlighting that ‘structural racism and social inequality’ were primary factors for higher BAME deaths, the new report also
incorporates recommendations from the PHE about measures that ethnic minorities must take to prevent themselves during the pandemic. The stakeholders pointed to racism and discrimination experienced by communities and more specifically by BAME key workers as a root cause affecting health, and exposure risk and disease progression risk. It said, “Racial discrimination affects people’s life chances and the stress associated with being discriminated against based on race/ethnicity affects mental and physical health. Issues of stigma with Covid-19 were identified as negatively impacting health seeking behaviours. Fear of diagnosis and “Once infected, many of the preexisting health conditions that increase the risk of having severe infection are more common in death from Covid-19 was identified as neg-
atively impacting how BAME groups took up opportunities to get tested and their likelihood of presenting early for treatment and care. For many BAME groups lack of trust of NHS services and health care treatment resulted in their reluctance to seek care on a timely basis, and late presentation with disease.” The British Medical Association (BMA) has been asking the government why higher number of BAME NHS staff died of coronavirus. Commenting on the new report, Chaand Nagpaul, Council chair of the BMA said, “It is important that we now move forward and deliver those changes [the recommendations provided in the new report] because that would be the fair and right thing to do. More than 90% of the doctors who had died during the pandemic were from BAME backgrounds.
Continued on page 4
Sushant Singh cremated in presence of family, close friends SEE PAGE - 26
20 Indian soldiers killed in border clash with Chinese troops SEE PAGE - 26