A hospital consultant has died from the coronavirus weeks after pleading to the prime minister for more personal protective equipment for frontline staff.
Abdul Mabud Chowdhury, a consultant urologist at Homerton hospital in Hackney east London, died after spending 15 days in Queens hospital, Romford.
Last month he wrote a Facebook message to Boris Johnson outlining the urgent need for PPE for frontline staff and calling for testing for healthcare workers to be fast-tracked.
He wrote: “Dear and respectable prime minister Mr Boris Johnson, Please ensure urgently PPE for each and every NHS health worker.”
He told Johnson that healthcare workers “are in direct contact with patients” and have a “human right like others to live in this world disease-free with our family and children”.
Philip Glanville, the Labour mayor of Hackney, hailed Chowdhury as a “hero” who died serving the borough. In a tweet he added: “I hope his death wasn’t as a result of continuing issues around testing & PPE, but it raises Qs. A sobering reminder of the lives being lost to keep us safe & the contribution BAME staff make.”
Chowdhury, who was born in Bangladesh, was 53 and had no underlying health conditions.
The Muslim Doctors Association said it was “deeply saddened” by his death. In a Facebook post it said: “He leaves behind his wife and two children. Our thoughts and prayers are with them.”
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Chowdhury is the latest doctor from a BAME background to die from coronavirus.
Others to have been named include:
- Dr Edmond Adedeji, an A&E doctor at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon
- Anton Sebastianpillai, a consultant geriatrician who trained in Sri Lanka and died in Kingston hospital just over two weeks after completing his last shift there.
- Dr Alfa Saadu, 68, a retired medical director born in Nigeria, who had been volunteering at his local hospital in Welwyn.
- Amged el-Hawrani, a 55-year-old ear, nose and throat consultant of Sudanese descent who was working at Burton hospital near Derby.
- Adil el Tayar, a 63-year-old surgeon from Sudan, who died after volunteering in A&E departments in the Midlands.
- Dr Habib Zaidi, 76, a general practitioner with Pakistani origins, who died after showing “textbook symptoms” of the virus.
