Jewish employees and users of state-funded medicine experience a high level of discrimination, or avoid it by shunning treatment, according to official research.
By A thank you to the National Health Service by Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150691122
Jewish employees and users of state-funded medicine experience a high level of discrimination, or avoid it by shunning treatment, according to official research.
A government-commissioned report found that Jewish staff and patients face “routine ostracism” in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).
Lord Mann, the government’s adviser on antisemitism, described how some staff are made to “suffer in silence,” while certain patients hide their Jewish identity, In response, NHS employees will no longer be allowed to sport political symbols on their uniforms. The heads of the 205 health trusts in England will be given training on opposing antisemitism.
Mann’s 60-page report—published on Thursday, June 4th—was ordered by then-Health Secretary Wes Streeting after various doctors had displayed a hatred of Jews, including on social media. Highlighting “shocking examples of intimidation and abuse within the health service,” Mann points out how some Jewish patients have avoided requesting treatment or delayed having important care delivered—all as a result of antisemitism.
Two doctors were struck off recently from the medical register and banned from practising medicine in the UK, while a third—Rahmeh Aladwan—is due to go on trial next year on charges of inviting support for the proscribed terrorist organisation Hamas.
According to Mann
Jewish people have to be confident they will receive the same treatment as everyone else, at all times in all situations. If people feel, as they do, that some have to hide their identity as patients or suffer in silence as staff, then the universality of the NHS is fundamentally breached.
While his report calls urgently on the NHS to become a “responsible (!) and inclusive employer,” it seeks to target all forms of racism and discrimination in the service, not only antisemitism—but including Islamophobia. This will no doubt further complicate the pushback, as many of the worst offenders who prompted the Mann report are also Muslim.
