THE PROFESSOR first joined Public Health England (PHE) in 2012, having previously held executive positions at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Protection Agency. He attended Wolmer’s Boys School in Kingston, Jamaica and later went on to study medicine at the University of the West Indies Mona campus.
He has over 20 years’ experience in public health medicine and epidemiology and is the Visiting Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London with research interests in HIV/STI prevention, sexual behaviour, health inequalities, and migration and health.
Disease
Over the last couple of weeks, several prominent BAME community activists, local councillors and MPs have urged the Government to examine why the disease was having a disproportionate impact on BAME communities.
At a recent Downing Street briefing, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said the government understands the anxiety that people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) communities feel about the impact that coronavirus appears to be having.
In the same briefing, The Voice had questioned Steve Powis, National Medical Director for NHS England, about the precise nature of the inquiry, who would be leading the inquiry and when it was expected to take place.
Various
Downing Street has also confirmed that Prof Fenton will report directly to the Chief Medical Officer and will engage with various stakeholders across BAME communities during the inquiry.
In addition, funding has been made available for independent academic research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). For more information visit www.nihr.ac.uk/covid-19.
Today’s announcement is a positive move by the government as it looks to tackle the concerns raised by the community and ensure a transparent and comprehensive review.
Comments Form
15 Comments
I am definitely interested in knowing about the findings especially because Africans in Africa are not dying in the same proportions.
Good point. More Somalis have died of Covid-19 in Sweden than Somalia.
Vitamin D deficiency is the probable cause of the excess mortality in African and south Asian people in UK, African Americans and Middle Eastern / Cypriots in the UK. Bangladeshis in the UK who eat oily fish regularly will be less affected. Prisoners in the US (many are African Americans) who exercise in the sun every day are 95% asymptomatic.
Melanin in the skin absorbs ultraviolet light, protecting the skin from cancer but also reducing the production of vitamin D by a factor of 10X compared to pale skinned white people without a sun tan. 80% of African Americans are deficient in vitamin D.
Vitamin D is essential to the normal functioning of the immune system. Public Health England is ignoring people with brown and black skin and offering advice aimed only at white people. It is a scandal and a tragedy! Thousands of people are dying unnecessarly.
The elderly make less vit D with the same sunlight and are especially at risk.
Almost all people with severe or critical COVIUD-19 have low vitamin D levels.
https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2020/04/28/Clear-link-between-vitamin-D-deficiency-and-severity-of-coronavirus-says-researchers#.XqgeRvEl75g.twitter
Institutionalised racism in the justice system is what causes disproportionately more black people to be incarcerated than white, is central to the windrush scandal and forced deportations, causes more black pupils to be excluded from schools. Why do we expect this enquiry to reveal anything else? If you push all the black doctors unprotected onto the Covid frontline and hold yourself back by manipulating racist hospital policies, you must expect their children to be orphaned rather than your own.
It will be interesting to see his findings. Hopefully it will not be another victim blaming exercise with no real action by the government.
An African American nurse of over 30 years experience has posted online that sometimes the symptoms in Ethnic minorities are different , sometimes they do not get the cough,headache and temperature but instead experience overwhelming lethargy and pain and by the time Covid is diagnosed, it is too late. It is a fact that Covid has killed very few people in Africa and the Caribbean .
So many questions. No doubt a combination of factors will be identified.Have our BAME Medical personnel been pressured to work: unprotected, longer hours compared to their white counterparts, in multiple roles across Medical institutions, thus overexposing themselves to the virus with little or no protection from supervisors? Is our tendency to be Vitamin D deficient a factor? What of BAME health profiles and the rates of obesity, hypertension and diabetes?
The lack of PPE for all Medical personnel is an abomination.
What will happen to the report?
This is indeed very good news. A very sensible decision, and all best wishes to Professor Kevin Fenton.
Prof Kevin Fenton is the sensible choice in leading this inquiry. PHE already knows half the reasons for the impact on BME communities.
I hope people will speak up about their experiences so we can get tothe truth and some action.
Would very much love to read his findings. Equally, the report on the government’s action plans in light of these findings.
Here we go again. A former employee of The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) where in 1976 an untested vaccine for Swine Flu, where injections were administered to 46 million US citizens with thousands being paralysed, maimed or died, all because of a soldier was forced to go on a parade march from his sick bed & died the next day. Roll on 50 years to Covid-19, and we have the vast majority of healthcare workers disproportionately affecting BAME in illness and and death, whilst non BAME were effectively shielded from a similar outcome. Hmmm ? I wonder which department will be exonerated and what recommendations will be offered as confirmation of the evidence. I won’t hold my breath.
What I have observed, with those nurses and doctors, non of the staff hadn’t changed out of their, protective gear, but has continued moving onto the next patient.
Infection control, measures and guidelines haven’t been followed.
Staff should change, out of their gear after each patient… that’s very important, to stop the spread of the disease.
Will go in the same direction as the windrush enquiry, I.e. delay in publication, findings and recommendations removed or tailored to more palatable to the state, then release the enquiry document for publication when the nation is distracted with another national crisis. This is what took place with the windrush enquiries.
It was a perfect storm waiting to happen, black and ethnic minority are higher in numbers on the front line of nursing and medicine because of lack of equal opportunity in the NHS, white colleagues are often over represented in higher positions where the roll is mainly open pushing.
Kevin, we your colleagues from U W I are so proud of you. We know you bring to this task, the highest level of integrity and competence. Your attention to detail, good work ethics and excellent foundation at the University of the West Indies guarantees credible and excellent results and success. Congratulations, blessings and support.
The level of Vit D in black people is low. Low in comparison to what? Who or what decides the level of Vit D that should be in my pigmented body?
Could it be that we were created with more melanin to control the amount of Vitamin D absorbed by our bodies? Therefore my norm is not yours.
From reports Africans at home are not dying at the rate their brothers and sisters are, elsewhere.
This is just nonsense. It is an attempt to seek a biological explanation when the explanation is clearly social. You want the explanation look to the Windrush scandal. It is about discrimination, racism or whatever you want to call it this week.