A weekly programme which focuses on people and the situations which shape their lives
Reporters: Jim Douglas Henry, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, Gillian Strickland, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

This week: Health in Black Hands
A row has broken out about Commonwealth and immigrant doctors in British hospitals: an argument with all the overtones of being not so much about medicine as about colour. Critics challenge their competence as doctors and nurses in British hospitals. But senior medical men point out that Britain's elaborate health service couldn't operate on the basis of white manpower. More than a third of the doctors and nurses in British hospitals come from abroad.
They come in search of training but have much to give as well as to receive. It would appear to be a fair exchange. But is it? Many training appointments in teaching hospitals seem closed to them and most must fill posts which white British doctors and nurses appear not to want. Is the row in our health service going to damage the relationship between immigrant doctors and British patients? Or is there a problem which should be brought out into the open and examined?

(Colour)