Hello I'm Nula McGovrin on the BBC World Service and this is BBC OS conversations, vaccine

hesitancy and ethnic minorities.

As we hear

hear conversations on how the pandemic affects lives,

we hear how wearing a mask is making it much more difficult to communicate

for people who stammer.

I never realized how much I rely on people being able to read my lips or when they see,

you know, that my mouth is open for a second longer than it might take someone else

that typically is a trigger for people to say hey you know something's going on

I'm not sure what but something's going on. A crisis will often expose existing problems and one aspect

that the past year has underlined is the health inequalities in several countries

if you belong to a black Asian or minority ethnic community. A new study in England

for example found that the health impact is much worse compared to white people.

And for some people, it's the equivalent of being 20 years older than you actually are.

The disparity is no different when it comes to the pandemic.

We've heard from around the world how black, Asian and Latino groups have been the hardest

hit by the first wave of COVID-19. Yet despite this,

people within these groups are also more reluctant and less likely to take up the

offer of the coronavirus vaccine.

Several theories have been put forward from misinformation and structural racism to language barriers.

So to find out more about what's going on, I've been speaking to Dr.

Ragerie de Raus, who is a sexual and HIV consultant at the Royal London Hospital

...