Dr Meenal Viz authors book inspired by her activism

A Gibraltarian doctor who campaigned for appropriate PPE equipment for NHS healthcare workers in the UK has published her first book.

Almost six years from when Dr Meenal Viz stood outside Downing Street in protest, she has released her first book, titled The Power of Protest in Healthcare.

Dr Viz made international headlines in 2020 when she was captured outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Downing Street in her hospital scrubs while heavily pregnant with her first daughter.

The sign she held up read ‘Protect healthcare workers’.

In the book she details what it was like to be working as a junior doctor at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the NHS and her landmark legal case against the UK government which led to national changes to PPE guidelines and legal obligations around risk assessment for NHS staff.

Dedicated to her daughters Radhika, Anoushka and Shivika, Dr Viz put pen to paper and recorded in detail her recollection of the pandemic from her perspective.

“It was a very revelatory process for me because as soon as I started to reflect on my own experiences and my own behaviours and why I did certain things, I realised that a lot of it actually comes from my experiences as a child,” Dr Viz said.

“It comes from listening to the stories of my parents and I found that it was really therapeutic, actually.”

“And it’s given me a deeper insight into the person I am and it’s given me more lessons that I can pass on to my kids.”

“[The book] wasn’t just a reflective process for me, it was a reflective process for our family in general.”

The main drive behind writing the book was that there were “so many different versions of what was happening”, Dr Viz said.

“We were being gaslighted quite a lot as medics and I was wondering, when my kids grow up and they learn about the pandemic, what version are they going to hear,” she said.

“I wanted to make sure it was the truth.”

“It wasn’t so much about getting a version of the story out there for the whole world, but it was more about just for my children.”

The writing process in itself took a bit longer than expected.

Dr Viz began writing the book after her first daughter was born, but life got in the way. She was pregnant with her second baby, working in St Bernard’s Hospital while being unwell.

While on maternity leave she would find pockets of time to write the book during the day or late at night, and then she found out she was pregnant with her third.

A project that should have ideally taken her 10 months took her about three to four years to write.

But it was the writing itself that was cathartic for Dr Viz.

“My pregnancy with Radhika was really difficult and I didn’t realise how much it affected me until I wrote it,” she said.

“It was the first time I really opened up on how difficult it is to have a baby, being alone in a pandemic with so many unknowns as well.”

And while she’s aware that this is not the first person to record what it was like to be a healthcare worker during the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr Viz said she thinks this book has been very important for South Asian women.

“These are women who have been told their whole life that they don’t have a voice, or women who are told they don’t have the agency to speak up,” Dr Viz said.

“I think this book has become a very powerful took to make that change, but not just on a grand scale of things, but I hope that my book allows people to feel empowered and to speak up, even if it’s at your dinner table or at your workplace.”

While she still describes herself as an activist, Dr Viz is happy to take a step back and enjoy her time with her young family.

Dr Viz will be at BookGem for a book signing on Wednesday November 12 at 10am as part of the line up for this year’s Gibunco Gibraltar Literary Festival.