13 October 2004

NHS gets its first-ever human rights director

The first-ever equality and human rights director for the NHS has been appointed today as part of the service's diversity agenda.

The new director, Surinder Sharma, has over 25 years' experience working on equality and diversity issues in the public, private and voluntary sector and one of his priorities will be to promote the chief executive's action plan on leadership and race equality.

Mr Sharma's role will also be to tackle inequalities in all aspects of health and social care delivery – for example, death rates from coronary heart disease among first generation South Asian adults are about 50% higher than the national average.

Perinatal mortality among Pakistani born mothers is also nearly twice the UK national average, and black people are over six times more likely than the majority of the population to be detained under the Mental Health Act, the health department noted.

Surinder Sharma, who joins from Ford Europe, where he was European Diversity Director, said: "I think that this is an exciting opportunity to deliver Sir Nigel Crisp's action plan, to bring in best practice, engage all our stakeholders and build on and share existing good practice in the NHS."

Health Secretary John Reid said that the appointment would not only ensure that appropriate services are available to anyone in the population, but also see that talents, skills and passion of all parts of the community are drawn upon.

The position at the Department of Health will be full time, although he will continue to work on a consultancy basis for Ford next year.

(gmcg)