Top UK body hails role of Indian doctors
There are currently nearly 30,000 doctors in the National Health Service (NHS) who gained their primary qualifications in India. Besides, there are as many doctors of Indian-origin in the NHS, mostly UK-born and educated children of Indian migrants.
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has installed a commemorative blue plaque at its London headquarters to honour the contribution of doctors from India and south Asia who often worked in difficult circumstances over the decades.
The ‘blue plaque’ is the latest RCGP initiative to honour migrant doctors, after its year-long exhibition, ‘Migrants who made the NHS’, to mark their contribution to the National Health Service (NHS) that completed 70 years in 2018.
Shiv Pande, who gained his medical qualification in Indore and moved here in 1971 to work in cardio-thoracic surgery before becoming a GP, said at the event: “I was happy as I could help many more people as GP in deprived inner city area of Liverpool. I miss my patients.”
There are currently nearly 30,000 doctors in the National Health Service (NHS) who gained their primary qualifications in India. Besides, there are as many doctors of Indian-origin in the NHS, mostly UK-born and educated children of Indian migrants.
The ‘blue plaque’ says: “This plaque commemorates the contribution of south Asian doctors to the creation, leadership and development of general practice within the NHS. It recognises their unstinting dedication and service to all patients often in challenging environments”.
Hailed for their central role in NHS’ development as architects and ‘lifeblood’, Indian doctors are also reflected in popular culture; for example, in the BBC’s five-part ‘The Indian Doctor’ television drama set in the 1960s in a south Wales mining village, starring Sanjeev Bhaskar and Ayesha Dharker, telecast in 2010.
Julian M. Simpson, author of a book on doctors from India and south Asia, titled ‘Migrant architects of the NHS’, says: “Doctors from the Indian sub-continent were not just contributing to the NHS, they were its very lifeblood. We should acknowledge they were among the architects of the NHS.”
Mayur Lakhani, RCGP president, said: “General practice in the UK would not be what it is today without the hard work, innovation, and courage of our predecessors...Indeed, without them, our profession and the NHS might not even exist at all”.
“Not only were they doctors, but they became highly-valued members of the communities in which they practised. Whilst many faced incredible challenges, our exhibition also documents the overwhelmingly positive and lifelong relationships they forged with their patients”.
The NHS currently faces a severe shortage of GPs (primary care) and hospital doctors running into thousands. Hospital managers have initiated some recruitment drives in India, besides opening more training avenues for newly-graduated doctors in India.
