Head of Royal Children’s Hospital condemns racism against Asian medicos.
The head of Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital Emergency Department has called out as “racism” the refusal of families to have their children treated by Asian staff members amid fears of a coronavirus pandemic hitting Australia.Dr Stuart Lewena said the “paranoia” around coronavirus “is acceptable”, but discriminating against medicos on the basis of race is not, citing at least four instances at the Royal Children’s Hospital in recent weeks.
“Whilst at the moment we’ve only seen a few isolated cases Whilst at the moment we’ve only seen a few isolated cases of what we would only view as racism being directed towards some of our staff, we did identify the fact that that was unacceptable,” Dr Lewena said.
“We weren’t going to wait until it became a larger problem, and we’re well and truly supporting our staff and getting the message to the community and those who attend our department that we have complete confidence and faith in all staff who work here at the hospital.
“There’s no need to be picking and choosing the doctor who sees you when you attend the hospital, and there’s certainly no need to be making that decision based on their race.
Because Dr Lewena said “recent weeks” when he could have said “month,” let’s assume he meant three weeks. The Emergency Department at The Royal Children’s Hospital treats 250 patients a day. Or 5250 in three weeks. Four of those allegedly refused to be treated by Asian doctors. We don’t know why. Some people prefer to avoid doctors with a poor grasp of English. On this flimsy basis, Dr Lewena rushes to the media to declare a pandemic of racism. Don’t be silly, old China. It probably came up at a department heads’ meeting and you felt you had to publicly ‘care.’ We get it. But don’t insult the people paying your salary with nonsense.