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Prof Kamlesh Khunti

Prof Kamlesh Khunti

He is soft-spoken, considerate and ever so humble. If you met Prof Kamlesh Khunti in the street, you probably would not give him a second glance.

But as the professor of primary care for diabetes and vascular medicine at the University of Leicester, Khunti is regarded as the world’s foremost expert in his field. That is remarkable in itself. But when you add that in the year of Covid, he turned his academic brain to how the virus was affecting us, you sense how extraordinary he is. “On April 1, I had colleagues from the Midlands and London who contacted me. One phoned, and others emailed me, and said ‘Kamlesh, we’re seeing more patients who are Asian at a young age with Covid in intensive care. You do research, is there anything going on?’ So, I put a tweet out, and I had a few trolls saying I’m scare-mongering and things like that. But three days later, the intensive care unit report came out that showed south Asian and black people represented about 35 per cent of the beds, compared to their population level of 14 per cent. Since then, the work has increased a lot more, we’re doing a lot more and others are doing a lot more.”


Since April, his feet have not touched the ground and, along with colleagues, Khunti has written academic paper after academic paper warning, advising and highlighting factors which make the disease worse for certain groups. “We’re looking at determinants, what are the factors that are affecting this increased risk? We’ll never find out, but we’ve reviewed a lot of the literature. We’ve conducted a lot of the studies, and there are some things that are coming up,” he reveals to the GG2 Power List.

“Things like deprivation, age, male comorbidities. We know that ethnic minorities have more comorbidities. We thought Covid was going to be with similar comorbidities to influenza – like respiratory diseases – but it seems to be different. The comorbidities are associated or diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension. We’ve done systematic reviews showing that and it’s ethnic minorities who have more of those comorbidities, 30 per cent of people in hospitals who die have diabetes, a very high risk.”

Khunti is now the chair of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) committee for ethnicity, an influential look at why disproportionate numbers of black, Asian minority ethnics (BAME) are not only contracting the virus but dying from it. As part of his role, he sits weekly at the top table with the government’s most senior scientific advisers, including the chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty.

“We come up with important policy questions and identify research gaps and research evidence and come up with recommendations for reducing the risk in ethnic minority populations,” says Khunti. “What happens is most of the papers go to Sage, and then those papers would eventually become public. The ones we’ve sent so far haven’t become public, so I’m not allowed to discuss that. But there’s a lot of interest in transmission and what are the risk factors.”

Khunti was born in Uganda, and his family left before Idi Amin expelled south Asians in their thousands. At first, they moved to India in 1969, and then to the UK in 1971. The professor was eight, and it would be two years later the family moved and settled in Leicester.

“Life was very difficult,” he recalls. “Initially, my brother, mum and dad lived in a rented room at someone’s house. I didn’t get schooling for a year because in those days, it was difficult to get into a school. So, I went to someone who taught me. It was one pound a week, and my mum used to earn four pounds and dad just seven pounds.

“They were both factory workers who didn’t speak English. Mum worked in a clothing factory, dad worked in an engineering factory. So, they managed to get jobs where there were lots of Asians so they could communicate with the managers easily.”

Both his parents have now passed away, and it is clear the deep love he has for them. Once the influx of Ugandan Asians started in the city, his father had to act very quickly to help his relatives. “My two aunts and their four kids came, so there was four of us and them. So, my dad had to find accommodation really quickly, and we managed to get two rooms rented in a flat above the shops. So, 10 of us lived in those two rooms, sleeping on the floor. We had to do that for about eight months, and eventually, dad managed to scrape some money and bought a house and then we moved in.

It may be hard to believe now, but the city council took out adverts in Ugandan newspapers urging Asians to keep out of Leicester. It was also a time when the far-right National Front would march through their neighbourhood demanding that the new refugees be kicked out of their new home.

“Even at school I was asked once to go back to the country I came from by one of the teachers. But that was the norm, you just expected that. I know we are now not as tolerant, but at that time, at a young age, you just wouldn’t argue with anyone about it.”

For someone so steeped in science and so expert in his field of medicine, surprisingly, Khunti does not have O-levels in mathematics, chemistry or physics. But what he did have was an O-level in Gujarati, something which did, unexpectedly enough, help him get into medical school. “I took a train and went to Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow, and over three days, I went to admissions offices and said I wanted a place to do medicine. In those days, you could get a place through clearing, and I got an offer from all three of them.

“But the only condition, which I didn’t know, and I believe a lot in fate and karma, was that Scottish universities needed a language at GCE, and I showed them my Guajarati certificate, and that’s how I got into Dundee.

“It was difficult, because we’re a very close family, and I’d never left home before. I just hated the first year because I was on my own. So, I used to get a bus home every three months. I’d remain sitting on the bus for 12 hours because that was the cheapest way to get back to Leicester. Yeah, but that makes you a better person.”

It was, the professor believes, an object lesson in never giving up. “All of us, whether you’re white, whether you’re an ethnic minority, we all face difficulties of certain types. The main thing is to not give up and continue whatever your goal is. All of us are very privileged that we get these opportunities. If I was in India, if I was in Africa, my parents couldn’t have afforded to put me in any form of training.

“This country gave me that opportunity, because I got a full grant to go to university. I had all the schooling, which was free, and the opportunities I’ve had here, I don’t think I would have had anywhere else. The issue is to take those opportunities and run with them. It’s no use moaning about things. It’s hard work, yes, but there are a lot of people worse off than we are. We’re very, very fortunate, I think.

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