Hundreds of overseas doctors, most of them from India, held a demonstration on Friday outside the UK Department of Health in London to protest new immigration rules forcing them to leave Britain.
Holding placards saying 'Death of Merit', 'International Medical Graduates are not Doormats' and 'Betrayal of Commonwealth Doctors', the non-EU doctors urged the British Government to withdraw the new immigration rules, describing them as 'unfair, unjust and discriminatory'.
New immigration regulations announced last month mean doctors from outside the European Union will no longer be able to train in Britain without a work permit, a change which could hit up to 20,000 medical practitioners.
Around 70 per cent of those affected come from the Indian subcontinent, a traditional recruiting ground for Britain's state-funded National Health Service (NHS).
Addressing the protesting doctors right across the Downing Street, Ramesh Mehta, President of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, said, "The new rule is unfair and unjust, and leads to discrimination against doctors who have been the backbone of the NHS since its inception."
Mehta said they had met the Minister of State for Immigration Tony McNulty a couple of days ago on the issue and he was sympathetic to their views.
After an hour-long peaceful demonstration, the doctors submitted a memorandum to the Department of Health urging withdrawal of the new rules and then marched up to the Trafalgar Square.
