Last night in Sweden Part 13

2 years ago
92

https://samnytt.se/lakargrupp-rasistisk-vardpersonal-dodar-rasifierade-patienter/
Medical group: racist health workers kill people of colour.
According to a small group of doctors with non-Western immigrant backgrounds who call themselves "Doctors Against Racism," Swedes' "racial bias" is the major health care problem in Sweden. In a call for action in a Doctor magazine, they claim that people of colour die when they are denied care by racist Swedish medical and ambulance staff because of the colour of their skin. There is a crisis in Swedish healthcare due to cuts and austerity. There are long queues and shortages of staff and beds, which seriously threatens patient safety. But according to the association "Doctors Against Racism", all this is overshadowed by the really big problem in healthcare - structural racism. A year ago they started an appeal and now the group is reviving it. The call, which was started by medical student Kaberi Mitra and resulted in the call group and the association "Doctors Against Racism", is disappointed that their demands have not been sufficiently heard despite the fact that it has been a year since they were made. The health care apparatus in Sweden is permeated by "structural racism", they say, and the need for anti-racist mobilisation is great.
When the call was launched a year ago, Mitra and some of her fellow students argued that patients with dark skin were suffering in Swedish healthcare because of the racism of Swedish healthcare workers. The fact that Swedish patients prefer healthcare workers who speak understandable Swedish was also pointed out in the call as an expression of racism, but not the reverse, where patients with immigrant backgrounds prefer healthcare workers who speak the language of their home country. Now, a year later, disappointment is the dominant feeling in the small association Doctors Against Racism. Only one parliamentary party (it is not mentioned which) is reported to have heeded the call for the supervisory authority, the Inspectorate for Health and Social Care (Ivo), to reallocate its resources to a new area of supervision: racist discrimination against dark-skinned people in health care. The group is also upset that it has not yet got its demand for the curriculum of all healthcare courses in the country to be rewritten and a new subject to be introduced in which people learn about the racism towards both healthcare workers and patients with immigrant backgrounds that they believe Swedes regularly subject them to in the healthcare system. Swedish healthcare permeated by "racist structures" It is also argued that healthcare education itself is permeated by "racist structures" where non-white students are "belittled" and do not receive the support and understanding they desire when they complain about this, but instead have their accusations challenged. The association is also disappointed with the Medical Association, which it believes has not taken the issue of widespread racism in healthcare as seriously as it did sexual harassment during #metoo. The association says that several "Afro-Swedish" and "racialised" patients have died in the past year because they were denied care by racist Swedish health and ambulance staff. It is outraged that the judiciary does not share the association's view of the current events and has therefore not convicted the healthcare workers concerned for what it considers racist crimes.
In its new appeal in a Doctor Magazine, the association calls for strong action against "racism in the health care system that continues with unchanged intensity", which it claims is only part of "widespread structures that permeate our entire society". It further writes that "racism is a constant feature of the health care system and affects both patients and staff". The group acknowledges that there is no data to support such structures in health care. But this in itself is evidence of the existence of structural racism in the form of the unwillingness of the responsible actors to collect such data.

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