Senior health figure accuses NHS of racism over care given to dying mother

A senior figure in the health service has criticised it for deep-seated racism after his mother “got a black service, not an NHS service” before she died.

Victor Adebowale, the chair of the NHS Confederation, claimed his mother Grace’s lung cancer went undiagnosed because black people get “disproportionately poor” health service care.

The NHS’s failure to detect her cancer while she was alive shows that patients experience “two different services”, based on the colour of their skin, Adebowale said.

His mother, Grace Amoke Owuren Adebowale, a former NHS nurse, died in January aged 92. He highlighted her care and death during his speech this week at the NHS Confederation’s annual conference as an example of “persistent racial inequalities in NHS services”.

His remarks prompted fresh concern about the stark differences between the care received by those from black and other ethnic minority backgrounds and white people.

“My mum, who worked for many years as a nurse, died earlier this year at the age of 92. It was difficult. It was not the dignified death that we would have wanted for her,” Adebowale told an audience of NHS bosses.

“It wasn’t the death she deserved. So it makes me clear about the need to address the inequity. I think she got a black service, not an NHS service.”

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Source: The Guardian, 14 June 2025