The world seems to have come full circle for the United Kingdom amidst the ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic which seems to have got the better of the Empire on which the Sun never rests.
What is bound to leave the UK red-faced is the fact that the immigrant doctors, a sizeable proportion of them being Indian origin doctors, who were harassed in the country during the Brexit movement have now come out as life saviours for the country that has been battered heavily by the Wuhan virus.
In recent times, the United Kingdom has witnessed a wave of bigotry against the immigrants, especially in the backdrop of the Brexit movement which itself owes its origins to the anti-immigrant wave in the United Kingdom.
What must have come as a surprise for the Great Britain is the fact that the first eight doctors who have succumbed to the Chinese virus after catching it from the infected patients, are all immigrants.
The immigrant doctors are at the frontline of the United Kingdom’s battle against COVID-19 primarily because the country’s healthcare system is dominated by immigrant doctors- those who were until very recently cursed within the country as job-snatchers.
One-third of the total doctors are immigrants, and that helps the Great Britain in saving roughly 2.70 million dollars that it would have been otherwise forced to spend on training medical staff. The UK saves up on its health budget with its dependence on immigrants.
Of the eight immigrant doctors who have died, one was a 62 year old heart surgeon from India, Dr. Jitendra Rathod.
In fact, the Indian doctors have stepped up to the mamoth challenge that they face in the United Kingdom. The country is struggling to check the spread of Coronavirus after its initial “herd immunity” strategy collapsed catastrophically.
The healthcare infrastructure in the United Kingdom with an already aching National Health Service seems to have been seriously overwhelmed by the ongoing Pandemic, with the country already recording more than 73,000 cofirmed cases apart from just below 9,000 deaths.
Now, even the retired Indian-origin doctors, who were only until about a year ago getting ridiculed in the United Kingdom for snatching the jobs of the White men in the country, have joined the NHS all over again only to help out the ailing country.
Ramesh Mehta, President of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) says, “I retired three years ago but have now joined the NHS back.”
He added, “It is an opportunity to give back to the medical system at this time of crisis across the UK.”
These Indian origin doctors are literally putting their lives at stake, given the crippling shortage of testing kits and Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) in the United Kingdom for healthcare workers.
According to Ramesh Mehta, “Doctors and nurses are getting infected and dying and that is not good for the healthcare system at this critical time.”
In fact, there is a clear hint of racism in the British healthcare system- a sense of the White man’s superiority.
The National Chairman of the BAPIO says, “Over the past few decades, thousands of Indian doctors and nurses have moved to the UK. They serve in remote areas where British doctors refuse to go. Second- and third-generation doctors of Indian origin here have specialised in key areas such as emergency medicine and pulmonary diseases. They are now at the frontline of treating the Covid-19 pandemic in hospitals even in remote areas. But such places don’t have access to good quality protective equipment and testing kits.”
Thus, while the British doctors remain employed at premier, urbane institutions, it is the Indian-origin doctors who are getting into the remote areas where there is not enough protection available with a clear lack of PPE and other medical gear.
Yet the UK doesn’t get over its casual racism against the immigrant doctors. The British superiority complex is writ large even in times of a public health emergency, and the idea of looking down upon those who were supposedly their subjects more than some 70 years ago continues to dominate the British psyche.
Bamrah corroborates that racism remains an issue in the Great Britain even in times of the Coronavirus, and says, “Indian-origin doctors work hard but they continue to face racism even during a public health crisis like now.”
Apart from the doctors, Indian nurses too are playing a critical role in the United Kingdom’s battle against Coronavirus. Marimouttou Coumarassamy, a nurse and General Manager at Arnold Lodge, a psychiatric hospital in Leicester says, “UK has a large number of South Asian nurses. Many from India have risen up the ranks and now have supervisory roles in large hospitals.”
The nurse adds, “This is a critical time for nurses at the frontline of the Covid-19 treatment. We are involved in the various protocols around isolation and distancing of patients and family members to save lives and keep ourselves safe.”
The way Indian doctors have come to the rescue of the British during the COVID-19 outbreak that has not sparred even the regal paraphernalia of the Empire, shows how the casual racism and imperialist hangover that still dominates the British psyche has turned out to be a major cause of its undoing.
It is quite ironic that the same doctors who were being constantly bashed and deplored in the UK only about a year ago are the ones pulling the Empirr out of a crisis that it fell into only becaus of its own disastrous policies.