Annabel Sowemimo’s timely and urgent new book exposes racism in medicine and signals a “moment of reckoning,” writes Sophie Harman
Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare is a new book by Annabel Sowemimo,1 a sexual and reproductive health registrar and reproductive justice activist. Motivated by what was missing from her medical and postgraduate healthcare training and by the questions asked in her inboxes and at clinics, Sowemimo has written an accessible and urgent call to action to tackle racism and racial inequalities in the healthcare system. This timely book is published as the UK continues to wrangle with its place in the world, its imperial past, and the resulting systemic racism in healthcare and society, exemplified by appalling rates of maternal mortality in black women.
The power of Divided is twofold. First, it sees and …