STRUCTURAL RACISM in the NHS prevented concerns held by Black and minority ethnic healthcare professionals over ill-fitting personal protective equipment (PPE) from being listened to the Covid inquiry has been told.

Ade Adeyemi, general secretary of campaign group the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations (Femho) addressed the inquiry which has been set up to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and learn lessons for the future.

He said that concerns from Black healthcare staff were ignored adding that they continue to face discrimination in the service.

During last week’s hearing Adeyemi said that “stark” disparities in the treatment of Black and minority ethnic minority staff and patients in the NHS contributed to a lack of thought given to issues such as how well face masks could fit on someone with a beard or someone who wore a headscarf for religious reasons.

PA News reported that during the hearing Adeyemi said: “It was difficult to find the right PPE (personal protective equipment) and this gave us a sense of the lack of, again, the belief of what we were saying.

“That the system can pick up signals and noise and disruption in other areas but when there’s noise and disruption of Black and Asian ethnic minority workers, it’s not heard and it’s not responded to immediately.”

When asked by inquiry counsel Andrew O’Connor KC if what he was describing could be considered “structural racism”, Adeyemi replied: “If it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

That the system can pick up signals and noise and disruption in other areas but when there’s noise and disruption of Black and Asian ethnic minority workers, it’s not heard

Ade Adeyemi, general secretary of Femho

Adeyemi said that Black healthcare professionals had contacted the group because the face fit test, which ensures that PPE fits securely, had not been performed properly.

He said: “We have so many examples of again just WhatsApp messages, and it’s so traumatic to receive them and feel powerless because we’re hearing those things, we’re hearing the face fit test isn’t done properly.

“Some ward managers aren’t seeing the results that it’s not fitting well and they’re actually still being encouraged to work.

“And you know, there’s a kind of toxic mess here.

“I described earlier about the power imbalances which mean most of our members didn’t feel able to raise those concerns and the brave ones that did weren’t listened to.

“But it was a palpable thing that we said ‘these things don’t always fit us well, there are some people who need extra appendages so it can go around the hijab etc’. Not listened to, not believed, not responded to.”

Femho was formed a year before the pandemic to tackle issues relating to race inequality in the health service. However Adeyemi said that many of these issues remain.

He said: “The evidence is very clear, both as patients, as service users of the NHS and social care system, and also as professionals both in a professional sense in a work capacity, the difference that we see with our White counterparts is stark and it’s been existing for many years.”

“It is these differences that led to the formation of Femho around a year before the pandemic, he said, so there can be shared knowledge to try to address a problem that “hasn’t been meaningfully, substantively addressed.”