UK doctors and National Health Service (NHS) staff have been told there will be zero tolerance of racism and should a patient ask to see a “white doctor” they are to refuse the request.

In a letter to all NHS staff, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was “horrified” at accounts of abuse directed towards a senior doctor and assured staff they’d be backed by management in tackling racism.

His letter was in response to an interview given to ITV News by orthopaedic surgeon Dr Radhakrishna Shanbhag, who described how a patient had asked to be seen by a white surgeon instead of him. 

“It made me reconsider my position in the NHS because I thought, do I want to put up with this at this stage after I have given my life, blood, sweat and tears to the NHS? Do I have to put up with this?” Dr Shanbhag said in the report on racism in the NHS on 31 October.