“If we get to the High Court, it’ll be like a rock show like you’ve never seen,” says doctor and musician Nishant Joshi, who is on a collision course with the government over the lack of protective equipment for NHS heroes battling Coronavirus.
Two months ago, he was splitting his time between the pre-Covid hospital frontline and playing bass with Luton rockers The Palpitations. Now that has all changed, he just wants the truth.
Gigs have long since been cancelled and band rehearsals abandoned. In their place, is a campaign for justice squeezed around long shifts treating patients in a pandemic.
The upcoming June 12 release of The Palpitations’ debut EP, Feed the Poor, Eat the Rich, is, however, an account of songs that scream horror movie-inspired end-of-the-world motifs.
They will sound strangely apt now, but they were recorded in a different time, when such dystopian notions were firmly fictional. Now they seem set to serve as a soundtrack to very uncertain times, in which Nishant is trying to uncover the truth about why personal protective equipment (PPE) still seems so hard to come by, for him and his NHS colleagues.
At the time of writing, the overall UK death toll due to Covid-19 has sadly risen north of 26,000. Devastatingly, that is the second worst death rate in the world.
Within that is more than 100 healthcare workers, including pregnant Luton and Dunstable Hospital nurse Mary Agyapong, whose baby was born by emergency caesarean section. She will never know her mother.
Joshi was the first doctor to speak out publicly at the start of this pandemic about the risks frontline healthcare workers are facing from the lack of adequate PPE.
He blew the whistle in The Guardian on March 16 and then made the case on Channel 4 news, on March 31, that “you wouldn’t send your soldiers into battle without a bullet proof vest.” He even warned of the coming crisis during an appearance on Luton’s Vandalism Begins at Home radio show.
And he’s been speaking up regularly since on social media and in the national press, despite NHS Trusts across the land attempting to gag staff from doing so.
Nishant’s pregnant wife, Meenal Viz, herself a doctor too, has also been vocal on the issue of PPE, in The Guardian newspaper and television appearances including Channel 4 News.
Last week she staged a one-woman protest outside the gates of Downing Street where an iconic photograph was taken that made the front page of The Telegraph and other national newspapers.
Frustrated with what they were seeing and experiencing, the husband and wife last week sent a pre-action legal letter via lawyers to the Department of Health, outlining an intention to seek a judicial review of their handling of the pandemic.
This was after guidance for PPE standards had been downgraded on March 13, contrary to World Health Organisation advice and since questioned by the some of medicines Royal Colleges.
A BBC Panorama investigation has since discovered that despite the government crowing about providing a billion pieces of PPE, these figures were boosted, in part, by counting 547 million individual surgical gloves, rather than pairs, plus non-protective items like paper towels and disinfectant.
The documentary also uncovered a failure to stockpile the World Health Organisation-standard gowns and visors. Doctors and nurses still report that equipment is inadequate, while at the very thin end of the wedge, some have resorted to fashioning their own out of bin liners.
Nishant and Meenal’s pre-action letter was published in media across the world last Thursday, yet the government said they didn’t receive it until the ‘close of play’ last Friday and asked for an extension in order to respond, but they failed to provide one by today’s deadline.
Nishant says he simply wants answers to two questions. The first being, why PPE guidelines were downgraded and an explanation of what the science was behind that decision. The second is that, if these decisions were based on shortages of equipment, why haven’t British manufacturers been mobilised to make it?
Given the government are seemingly struggling with their emails – with messages appearing to go missing from everyone from the EU over a medical equipment bulk-buying scheme, and frustrated British businesses willing but unable to supply their PPE – the doctor duo are expecting legal action will be necessary after today’s deadline.
“It means that we have to push for judicial review because it seems like the government are keen to kick the can down the road as much as possible and wait until the plateau is over, that the curve is really on the downward slope and public opinion changes,” said Nishant, speaking on the Transmission Indie podcast.
“They are hoping for football to come back, they’re hoping for music to come back – so am I to be fair – but hoping for theatre and cinema to come back, so we actually have some gentle and pleasant distractions.
“Nobody wants to listen to me during a court case about PPE. Not even I want to get involved in it to be fair, at the best of times, it’s just my duty and my commitment as a citizen and I feel that it needs to be done.
“So, really, if we don’t get a satisfactory response what we’re going to do is take this to a judicial review.”
They have already launched a crowdjustice fundraiser online to help raise the £120,000 that it would take to file such a legal challenge.
“Everybody in Luton is giving us so much support. It has to be a local effort, which becomes a national one, so thank you to everybody in Luton who sent a message of support and thanks to everyone who’s sent a donation on crowdjustice as well,” said Nishant.
“It really makes a difference and we’re not far away from a potential judicial review and that’s going to be a seminal thing in our lifetimes.
“I think this is a big question about democracy as well. It is not just about PPE, it’s about, are we allowed to speak the truth in our democracy?
“And, yeah, unfortunately it will cost money, so we’re seeking to raise £120,000, which is a heck of a lot of money, but when I consider the families who have reached out to me and spoken of their own suffering, their own grief, I think that they deserve justice.
“I think it’s our duty and everybody’s duty. Anybody who has heard of these cases and has been affected by them will know there’s been some sharp practice involved at all levels.
“We have to seek justice now otherwise we’ll have to live with it for the rest of our lives.
“This is the sort of thing that I think is pivotal to our democracy and if we don’t address it now, the next 20 years are going to look really shit for all of us.”
It’s not particularly pleasant at present, but while the country has to contend with lockdown, Nishant is concerned that he’s already been exposed to patients suffering with Coronavirus.
Asked how he’s remaining positive, he said: “Every obstacle I’m facing, every corner that I turn, I just keep on remembering that one question, what is the truth?
”It’s just about remembering that we are fighting for families of these healthcare workers who died at work, in service, and, quite possibly, because the government knowingly sent them in with poor equipment and that’s what I want to uncover.”
He and Meenal expect that further obfuscations from the government will mean they’ll have to mobilise people to help hold those in power to account – something that he promises will bring out the rock star in him.
He said: “There’s no football, there’s no cricket, there’s no sport, there’s no music, so we’ll definitely make sure that, if we get to the High Court, it’ll be like a rock show like you’ve never seen.”
You can listen to the full interview; the unreleased next Palpitations single, Lights Out, and Nishant’s take on the post-pandemic future of live music on the Transmission Indie Podcast.
And please to donate what you can to the crowdjustice campaign to hold the government to account.
