Free healthcare lessons for Bengali women on how to spot the symptoms of serious illnesses have been set up by a team of junior doctors.
As part of an innovative new project, medics from the Royal London hospital will hold weekly conferences at the Jagonari Women’s Educational Resources Centre in Whitechapel.
The classes are for unemployed women who are isolated from the community.
The group will be educated on how to prevent and treat chronic illness through healthy eating and exercise and encouraged to attend breast and cervical cancer screenings.
Registrar for Barts and the London NHS trust, Dr Louise Ma, said: “The women have told us they want to learn how to spot the signs and symptoms of diseases like diabetes, stroke, heart attacks plus how to care for children with a high fever.
“These might seem like fairly straightforward messages but many of these women cannot read or speak very much English and don’t know how important this information is.”
Dr Paula Fagan, Dr Jocelin Hall and Dr Helen Ward are the three other medics involved in the sessions.
Last week employment minister Chris Grayling was told about the scheme when he visited the Whitechapel Road
hospital.
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