LONDON: The UK calls on Sundays for international action on the problem of medical devices such as oximeters who work better to people with lighter skin, say gaps may have a cost of ethnic minority lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he had assessed the reviews about this issue after studying the oxtimeters, which measures blood oxygen levels and is the key to assessing covid patients, providing less accurate readings for darker patients.
“It’s systemic throughout the world.
It’s about racial bias in some medical instruments.
It’s not intentional but it exists and oximeters is a very good example of it,” Javid said during a BBC interview with the interview.
Asked whether people might die because Covid-19 as a result of defects, Javid said: “I think maybe yes.
I don’t have full facts.” He said the reason the difference was that many medical devices, medicines, procedures and textbooks were put together in white majority countries.
“I want to make sure we do something about it but not only in England.
This is an international problem so I will work with my colleagues around the world to change this,” Javid said.
He said he had talked about this problem to his colleagues, the same interesting him.
Javid said he had realized the problem after seeing why, in the UK, people from black ethnic backgrounds and other minorities had been influenced by disproportionately by Covid-19.
He said that at the height of the initial stages of pandemic, a third of the acceptance for Covid to the intensive care unit was for ethnic minority patients, which doubled their representation in the general population.