大象传媒

Dr Bipin Shah from Mumbai remembers life as a young doctor in Wales in 1959 and feeling homesick for India.

In the 1950s and 60s the British medical profession was revolutionised by the arrival of doctors from India and Pakistan, travelling to deprived areas across the UK, including the south Wales valleys. Once the doctors had arrived in Britain many found that the specialist jobs they had coveted were hard to find. They thought they were coming to teaching hospitals, but in fact the only jobs they could get were in poorer areas of the UK. They found positions in places such as the Rhondda valley where there was severe deprivation; poor people with significant health needs and chronic diseases that had been neglected by the NHS in Wales at that time.