New York (AFP)

After three months fighting the coronavirus, which has particularly affected the black community, many healthcare workers are taking part in protests against police violence, seeing it as another aspect of the same inequality.

This Thursday, in New York, hundreds of people descended in their smocks or tunics, sometimes wearing protective masks, at the foot of their hospital to express their support for those who have been walking for more than ten days.

"I am a health care professional who fights Covid-19, but I also fight with the virus of racism," said nurse Billy Jean.

Many of those celebrated by millions of confined people every night for weeks from their window want the spotlight to turn in a different direction now.

"The protesters who speak out about these problems, who put their lives at risk, who risk being arrested and raped by the police, they are the heroes now," said Dr Damilola Idowu.

"Every day we observe the effects of racism when we treat patients," said the 26-year-old doctor, because "black patients die disproportionately from chronic diseases because they are not followed up properly."

"We also see the daily violence that affects these communities," she says, "of the black men who come to us with gunshot wounds, and the effects of police violence on our patients."

Some 22.9% of patients who die from coronavirus are African-American, while blacks represent only 13.4% of the population in the United States.

- A two-tier health system -

They were many, Thursday, to denounce the functioning of the American health system, largely private and within which money is a fundamental data, which sometimes takes precedence over care.

In 2018, eight years after the massive expansion of the system with Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, 27.5 million people were still without health coverage.

Emergency physician at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, Dr. Kamini Doobay denounced the methods of some hospitals which accept public funding but refuse treatment to uninsured or poorly insured people.

"It's looting!" He exclaimed, making a parallel with the looting that took place on the sidelines of the protests, in New York and in several other American cities.

"It is a crime that perpetuates these inequalities," he said, to the applause of other caregivers. "We must denounce this public health system which practices segregation in New York to provide solutions."

The proportion of deaths among African-Americans is double (38 per 100,000 per year) than that observed among the white population (19) in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention (CDC), the main authority of American public health.

For Dr Doobay, the problem also comes from the approach of the American authorities, who often prefer to deal with the repression of public health problems like drugs, with the police on the front line, rather than by prevention.

"It is our responsibility to join these demonstrators to say: we are here to bring about change," enthusiastic Sigal, a medical student, in the green outfit of doctors.

Many caregivers are from ethnic minorities and also experience racism in their daily lives.

"We can also be victims of the police. It is not because we are doctors that we are protected," said a woman doctor of Arab origin, present, with a colleague, in the main procession of demonstrators who parade Wednesday.

"When they see us, (the police) don't say, oh, they're doctors," she said. "You are just a Muslim Arab and she," pointing to her colleague, "is just an Indian girl."

© 2020 AFP