BAME recommendations should be implemented immediately

The British Medical Association has called for the recommendations of a report into the impact of coronavirus on black, Asian and minority ethnic people to be implemented immediately.

The report, commissioned by Public Health England, has seven recommendations and suggest that racism could contribute to increased risks for BAME groups. Doctors have said that it is now ‘critical’ to carry out risk assessments of vulnerable groups and protect them at work.

The British Medical Association says that more than 90 per cent of doctors who had died during the pandemic were from BAME backgrounds. Doctors from these communities were also three times as likely to say they had felt pressured to work without sufficient protective equipment.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, who chairs the council of the British Medical Association, told the BBC that it was important to deliver changes because ‘it's the fair and right thing to do for our population’, suggesting that the recommendation for risk assessments would mean workers at the greatest risk could be redeployed into safer roles, such as tackling the backlog of non-coronavirus illness in the NHS.

The report also recommends: better data collection about ethnicity and religion, including having this recorded on death certificates to accurately monitor the impact on these communities; supporting further research with the participation of ethnic minority communities to understand the increased risk and develop programmes to reduce it; improving BAME groups' access to, experiences of and outcomes from NHS and other services; and developing risk assessments for black, Asian and minority ethnic workers in roles where they are exposed to a large section of the general public or those infected with the virus.