Doctors ’must lead fight against inequality and injustice’

The UCL professor elected as the new president of the British Medical Association (BMA) has issued a rallying cry to doctors to lead the fight against health inequalities and social injustice. He quoted the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda as he called on his BMA colleagues to 'rise up against the organisation of misery'. Professor Sir Michael Marmot (UCL Epidemiology & Public Health) said he was surprised by his election to head the association of doctors as his research and its policy implications emphasised that the causes of health inequalities lay outside the medical sector in the organisation of society. He said: "My year as president will have real meaning if I can help encourage other doctors to be active in the challenge to reduce avoidable inequalities in health, not just here within Britain, but globally between countries." Earlier this year Professor Marmot published the results of a Government-commissioned review of health inequalities in Britain entitled it: Fair Society: Healthy Lives. It concluded that, although health inequalities are normally associated with the poor, premature illness and death affects everyone below the wealthiest tier of English society. Professor Marmot also chaired the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH). Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system.