Remember The Diversity In The Best Of The UK Response To Covid-19
As the world scrambles to respond to the global pandemic that is Covid-19, the UK too has found itself on a steep learning curve. The lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for a National Health Service fighting with its life to do its job has poignantly pointed to the very human cost of decisions made in positions of leadership. It has also concentrated minds on the need for agility, rapid innovation and collaboration across industry sectors. Both the response of Britain’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and manufacturing) community and the talent that is being harnessed across the human beings who make up the entire Covid-19 defence must be noted for our future on the other side.
The diversity of the front-line of the NHS response has jumped out in every news story in the coverage of the pandemic. From the start, many of the awful images of families mourning the loss of a loved one which have accompanied the news on all our digital communication devices have screamed out the NHS reliance on a multi-cultural, multi-racial cadre of healthcare professionals. In terms of gender, nine out of 10 nurses in the UK are women who are undervalued, as the Royal College of Nursing reported in January.
Little surprise then, that the Home Office has announced any doctors, nurses and paramedics with visas due to expire before October 1, 2020 will have them automatically extended for one year as part of the national effort to battle the virus. Last week we heard that a cross-party group of more than 60 MPs had urged that foreign nationals working in the NHS should be given indefinite leave to remain in the UK in honour of their contribution to combating the Covid-19 crisis.
Yet when it comes to leadership, the NHS is far from diverse, an issue that has been raised again and again, and is now, at least, acknowledged. The importance of that lack of diversity will be under scrutiny in the reckoning on all aspects of the stages of its ability to deliver an effective Covid-19 response.
As part of its efforts to help provide the NHS with essential equipment to do its job, almost a month ago the government put out an appeal, asking for businesses who could support in the supply of ventilators and ventilator components across the UK as part of the response to COVID-19. It marked the start of cross-sector collaboration that now looks critical to any effective pandemic response.
Formula One was one of those quick to respond, and the urgency for innovation has become paramount. Not a ventilator, but a breathing aid that can help keep Covid-19 patients out of intensive care was adapted breathtakingly fast by mechanical engineers at UCL and clinicians at UCLH working with Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (Mercedes-AMG HPP), and by the end of March had been approved for use in the NHS.
Also at some speed, Ventilator Challenge UK, a consortium of significant UK industrial, technology and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors came together to produce medical ventilators created to strict regulatory standards. It is led by Dick Elsy, CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a group of manufacturing research centres in the UK.
As the UK government scrambles to meet its ventilator targets and get PPE to where it is needed, it is not alone. Governments across Europe have been intensifying their search for ventilators as Covid-19 continues to ravage the world, as the FT reported. The government has recently confirmed the arrival of 300 ventilators from China, and the German army has donated 60 to the UK, in the most recent addition to numbers needed.
When it comes to the shortage of PPE, this is also a global challenge. During a media briefing on March 27, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said the chronic, global shortage of personal protective gear " is one of the most urgent threats to our collective ability to save lives" from the clutches of Covid-19.
Speaking after an earlier meeting the WHO had with 50 ministers of health around the world who shared their experience of the challenges facing them, the director-general said that while WHO continues to ship PPE to countries in need, the problem could not be fully solved without "international cooperation and international solidarity."
In the UK today, the ventilator challenge, alongside the one to deliver adequate PPE to healthcare workers in the frontline is bringing sectors together as never before, aided by better digital communication. New collaboration has involved the wider public as well, as noted recently in this opinion piece by Hayaatun Sillem, the first female CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering in London, published earlier this month in Newsweek.
“The last few weeks have highlighted just how important it is not to focus on the end products without considering the supply chains - and skills - needed to deliver them at the volume and pace required” writes Ms Sillem.
Her position at the top of the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering is significant to its commitment to changing the fact that the UK faces a major skills gap and diversity deficit here. Last September she pointed out in an opinion piece that the latest data indicated an annual shortfall of up to 59,000 engineering graduates and technicians. At that time only 12% of the UK’s engineering workforce were female - and a report commissioned by the Academy placed the UK 58th out of 86 countries globally for gender diversity among engineering graduates.
“The situation is somewhat different, but no less worrisome, for Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) engineers: only 8 % of UK professional engineers are from BAME backgrounds, despite the fact that over 30 % of UK engineering higher education students are. Moreover, BAME students are twice as likely to be unemployed six months after graduation than their white counterparts, even when the type of university and degree class is controlled for. This is an unacceptable differential in employment outcomes that we are working hard to tackle” she wrote.
Today the UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock specifically acknowledged the debt owed to BAME health professionals who have given their lives in the fight against Covid-19. In response to criticism from doctors from the British Medical Association (BMA) on the threat to doctor’s working without adequate PPE, he told the BBC the government was looking into how NHS staff who had died with the virus were infected.
He went on to say: "But that doesn't take away from the bravery of every single NHS worker …I was particularly struck at the high proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds and people who have come to this country to work in the NHS who have died of coranavirus. We should recognise their enormous contribution."
Nor is the NHS Confederation unaware of the concern at the deaths among BAME clinicians dealing with the crisis. A piece recently up on its website quotes the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre reporting that 35% of almost 2,000 patients are BAME, nearly triple the 13 % proportion in the UK population as a whole. As Joan Saddler, director of partnerships and equality at the NHS Confederation and Wayne Farah, co-facilitator of the BME Leadership Network state, this is consistent with emerging international data and of great concern on many levels.
As the death toll continues to rise around Covid-19, the urgency of focusing on an effective response will remain the main priority. But the snapshot we are being given on the way in which ‘diversity’ as an issue for Britain is being treated across disparate sectors it has thrown together suggests that it should be looked at long and hard again, to reaffirm national values more firmly on fundamental human equality, and equality of opportunity.
