Discrimination in the Delivery of Care

As Martin Luther King said in 1966:

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman."

Throughout the 20th century, there was a movement in the UK to address aspects of such inequalities and this culminated in the formation of the NHS. The question arises as to how effective it has been in ensuring that communities from different ethnic backgrounds have equal access to hospital-based care.

Dr Farukh's research has explored the provision of treatment for chronic gastrointestinal diseases, namely inflammatory bowel disease and achalasia, in South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and Eastern European communities. This work identifies clear evidence that these communities are significantly less likely to receive expensive treatments, such as biologic therapies, less likely to be admitted to hospital, less likely to be reviewed by senior clinicians or undergo investigations and yet more likely to be offered new treatments, such as endoscopic myotomy, whilst practitioners are on the early part of their learning curve.

This highlights failings among organisations with statutory responsibility for ensuring equitable and a need for better insight into the reasons for these failings.