Returning our Ebola medals: our opposition to the hostile environment within the NHS

INTRODUCTION

Recently I joined a group of 20 health professionals in returning our Ebola medals to the government. We had been proud to receive these as recognition of our work in the recent West African Ebola epidemic, but felt unable to keep them in light of the current hostile environment within the NHS.

After working in Sierra Leone in 2015, I started my GP training in the South West. I was fortunate to participate in the Global Health Programme and spend part of my ST3 year working in Vial refugee camp on Chios Island, Greece. While providing basic health care to immigrants there, I was unaware that, back home, the government was implementing new regulations that meant the same group of people would be denied treatment in the NHS. This, in practice, has meant that some of society’s most vulnerable members have …