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  • Now, all this week, we've been reporting from one of the hospitals hardest hit by Corona virus.

  • In tonight's report from the Royal London Hospital in east London, Clive Murray meets the black and minority ethnic staff, playing a crucial part in trying to save lives.

  • Many of them face a higher risk of becoming seriously ill if they catch the disease.

  • The front line of the war on Corona virus is everywhere the trenches air in the mundane on the floor of a corridor on a door handle in the shake of another's hand, the more Asari is proud he's waging war on the virus.

  • A 10 year veteran of the cleaning staff of the Royal London Hospital, he's at work as London wakes and blackbirds sing.

  • All of us can be notice.

  • Somebody has to be a doctor.

  • Someone would have to be a days, and so you have to be a domestic Read off.

  • What are you because all together we can't be it.

  • You're helping to save lives, have yeah, we have to call all over, come together, and then we save more lives.

  • It's a selflessness much admired in this pandemic.

  • There's choosing to do what others and so many of the nurses and doctors and consultants as well as cleaners, the helping hands guiding us through this storm.

  • A black, Asian and minority ethnic somewhere deep down my heart skipped a little entering the Royal London hospitals Covad wards because study suggests those from the BME community are being affected by the virus disproportionately, and they're almost twice as likely to die from infection than those who are white.

  • Why is unclear way had permission from ALS patients or their families to fill?

  • I was never until I came here and my money.

  • They told me we are gonna have training.

  • So as soon as we had the training, everything was fine.

  • I wasn't scared and I wasn't panicking anymore.

  • And we cling to reduce depression.

  • So if I don't come the first, I'm gonna spread more When it comes to BME NHS staff.

  • Proximity to the virus through close contact with infected patients is a disproportionate feature of many of their roles in the health service.

  • Some argue the NHS needs to examine staff deployment policies for structural racism where certain workers are retained in lower paid roles.

  • But for most nurses and doctors, white or black.

  • Given the correct protection, where else would you want to be, if not cushioning a patient's pain?

  • Because when all the fancy labels are stripped away your feeling care?

  • Listen to Irene from Uganda, a nursing student who we filmed on her very first day on a covert war.

  • She has to perpetual anxiety of every single nurse or doctor, no matter how experienced working in that environment with the virus so close, you're like, Oh my God, Was I carefully now, um, I getting it today.

  • Well, I get it tomorrow.

  • It's very real.

  • Yeah, but you just have to keep strong.

  • I always tell myself, Someone has got to treat people like I mean, even if it were my relatives, I would want someone to care for them, So that kind of keeps me going.

  • The Muslim chaplain at the Royal London Farooq Siddiqi, have seen the toll on the local Asian community in this pandemic.

  • Countless dance.

  • He prepares to enter a code ward at the hospital on his first visit, prayers for his own safety before prayers and words of comfort for others.

  • There's too many people to bury, and we had some cemeteries where they were having a kind of an Islamic version of a mass graves where they were very 10 people in one kind of plot is gripped into the heart of our community community, which is based around the mosque.

  • Family relations, being with friends and loved ones on a daily basis.

  • Does the virus no.

  • A victim is black or white?

  • Of course not.

  • But social factors like income and wealth and education affect the quality of the health of all of us.

  • A such poorer black and ethnic minority communities may be more vulnerable, for there are other tragedies lurking in this pandemic.

  • For some who proudly called this country home but whose heart belongs to a foreign field.

  • In this morgue, we came across two bodies two women, one from West Africa and want from North Africa.

  • They called Britain home, But now there's a purgatory, a final torment because one of the cove it victims wanted burial in the soil of her birth.

  • But the closed border means her body sat here for two months in this mosque, two more bodies shielded by the flags of turkey and northern Cyprus, and there are more bodies outside piling up in shipping containers.

  • We've been to roll London a few times to pick up uh, some of our community members, Um, that passed from the virus I'm waiting for.

  • It's a hit me at the moment.

  • Food.

  • Right then.

  • It's wonderful.

  • It's too personal, real close.

  • You know, it doesn't get any closer when your bean growing up in your community and then you find yourself having to do the last journey for him, Understand?

  • In the pain, that is it going?

  • It's just rumor.

  • It's trombone.

  • Every level grieving delayed is grieving.

  • Denied.

  • This is a shared fight toe overcome a shared pain and its belief in our shared humanity that will get a strong yeah on tomorrow night's program.

  • Music to soothe In our troubled times, this is the one time I need to stand up to do my job.

Now, all this week, we've been reporting from one of the hospitals hardest hit by Corona virus.

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