A senior Indian-origin surgeon on Monday called on the United Kingdom administration to value abroad medical professionals, from countries like India, without which the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) would not last.
Dr. Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the British Medical Association (BMA), speaking to thousands of doctors from around the UK at the council’s annual conference in Brighton, cautioned that the NHS was being run ragged as it was scandalously ravenous of resources it badly wants.
“Without its overseas medical workforce the NHS would not have survived a single day,” he said, welcoming recent UK Home Office changes to its Tier 2 visa policies to remove doctors and nurses from a monthly cap that was blocking their entry.
“The BMA campaigned tirelessly alongside others…which finally achieved the removal of the Tier 2 visa cap for doctors,” said Dr. Nagpaul, holding it up as proof that “hostile political ideology” can be overcome with collective pressure.
The chair of the BMA, which functions as a union and professional body for medical professionals, likewise called for a culture alteration within the NHS to guarantee that the system is seen as one that “positively welcomes and values” skilled abroad doctors.
“They come here to acquire specialist training, and in doing so provide the NHS with a vital service when we’re desperately short of doctors,” he said, adding that the BMA would be holding a summit following month to tackle the issue of equal opportunity and eliminating “racial bias” in the NHS towards black and minority ethnic BME doctors.
His speech is an outcome as the UK prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service, which has concerned declarations by the government of supplementary funding and resources for the NHS.
Yet, Nagpaul warned that the additional funds fall way short of what the service requires.
“The NHS has been systematically and scandalously starved for years. It lacks doctors, it lacks nurses, it lacks beds. It’s not just the channel that separates us from our European neighbors but a vast funding gap equating to 35,000 hospital beds or 10,000 doctors. We’re being run ragged,” he said.
“The clear message to the health and social care secretary, Jeremy Hunt who positions himself as the champion of patient safety is that the single greatest factor affecting safe care is chronic underfunding which has starved and paralyzed the NHS of its ability to care,” he added.
His message at the beginning of the four-day BMA conference highlighted how some infirmaries are now running at 100 percent bed occupancy, in spite of harmless limits being set at 85 percent.
In reference to the government’s recent promise of a cash boost for the NHS, Nagpaul urged that it was vital that the money is delivered to treat patients and attract and retain medical staff.
By Sowmya Sangam
