B IG I N T ER VI EW
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
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ngland’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has just rushed back to his office at the Department of Health and Social Care from unplanned, urgent meetings in Whitehall, down the road. It’s the day the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has said the evidence isn’t clear on Covid-19 vaccinations for 12–15 year olds and has deferred to the four Chief Medical Officers of the UK for a view to inform what will be ultimately be a political decision by Government. He’s clearly an incredibly busy man – as he has been throughout as the clinical lead, and face, of the Covid-19 pandemic – but he’s making time for a rare sit-down interview with GP Frontline. The key message he wants to get across: “a massive thanks to general practitioners and the wider primary care team for what they’ve done during the pandemic and will have to continue to do over what will be a very difficult winter.” Prof Whitty sees taking a view on ‘difficult issues’ as a key part of the role. However, he is also clear that his role is to advise – and the Government’s role to make decisions. “My job is to be a doctor,” he explains, “it is right that people should ask me, and people like me, questions you would ask a doctor – and I may take advice from others, including GPs, before answering. Some decisions are highly technical, and it would be rare for a political leader to go against my advice on these, because it’s a medical question; but questions about what to do in terms of societal impact and economic interventions are for political leaders to take the call.” His first Government role was in 2009 when he joined the Department for International Development as Chief Scientific Adviser, a role he took on at the DHSC in 2016 – with responsibilities including leading the National Institute for Health Research – until becoming CMO in 2019, succeeding Prof Dame Sally Davies. He's a Consultant Physician at UCLH, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Gresham Professor of Physic. An epidemiologist by specialty, he understands the importance of medical generalism with one of his priorities on becoming CMO to
04 | BIG INTERVIEW
promote a greater focus on generalism in medicine in order to care for the increasing numbers of people living with multiple, chronic conditions: “Medicine has been extraordinarily effective through medical science in dealing with individual diseases, and much less strong in dealing with people who’ve got multiple morbidities…I’d like to see a celebration of generalism that allows specialists to continue specialising, but maintaining the generalist skills that allow them to see, for example, an eight-year-old with six or seven conditions and that those interact, not just medically but in how that patient lives their life. “It’s what most GPs deal with all the time and it’s something I think the rest of the medical profession could learn a lot from,” he says. His priorities were obviously thrown into disarray in early 2020 with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. It made him one of the most recognisable faces in the country, taking part in regular press conferences alongside the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers and other scientific advisers. “It was the bit of the role I was least looking forward to,” he admits, “I had no idea that it would be as extensive as it is, but you’ve got to accept it if you take a role like this and then there’s an emergency. It’s the job of a doctor to communicate risk, and values, in an honest way.” In terms of how he’s dealt with the unprecedented scrutiny he modestly says; “not to get too obsessed with either the good or the bad. The best bit of advice I was given early in my career was never to worry about criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from, and I’ve stuck to that.” As an epidemiologist with a clinical interest in infectious disease and experience of previous pandemics, Prof Whitty says he was ‘relatively familiar’ with the necessary areas of science to lead the pandemic response but insists there was no such thing as a ‘perfect’ person for the role. “We’re all shades of imperfect on this,” he says, “it was a new infection, there was a huge amount we didn’t know. You have the things you know, and a bunch of stuff you don’t, and you have to go with your best judgement. It’s the problem of dealing with uncertainty – something every GP has to deal with every day in their professional life.”
Department of Health and Social Care
Professor Chris Whitty reflects on his role leading the response to the biggest health crisis for a century. He speaks to Daniel Openshaw...
