The Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MBTT) has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of Dr Avinash Sawh, who was out­ed last week by an em­ploy­ee for mak­ing racist and deroga­to­ry state­ments.

At a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, while flanked by his le­gal team, Sawh apol­o­gised pro­fuse­ly for his state­ments.

But rather than dull the pub­lic out­rage, there have been even more calls for the Med­ical Board to re­voke his med­ical li­cense.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Med­ical Board said it met on Wednes­day to dis­cuss Sawh’s com­ments and it strong­ly con­demns any form of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, racial slurs, or ver­bal abuse by reg­is­tered med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers.

“These ac­tions can be po­ten­tial­ly con­strued as in­fa­mous and dis­grace­ful con­duct on the part of a doc­tor as de­fined in the Med­ical Board Act,” the re­lease stat­ed.

The MBTT said in light of this, it’s Coun­cil has de­cid­ed to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Sawh’s be­hav­iour.

“As an ini­tial step, cor­re­spon­dence will be sent to Dr Avinash Sawh seek­ing an ex­pla­na­tion,” the re­lease said.

Sawh’s at­tor­ney, Mar­tin George, who last week called for the MBTT to take ac­tion against Sawh, said he wel­comes the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

When George made his com­ments on TTT News, Sawh was not yet his client. But he told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that he still thinks some cor­rec­tive ac­tion needs to be tak­en.

“Of course at the end of the day, when you say take ac­tion, it’s a ques­tion of what ac­tion needs to be tak­en, and as I point­ed out yes­ter­day in the press con­fer­ence this points to a much broad­er and wider prob­lem in the so­ci­ety and if it is the med­ical board in­ves­ti­gates and finds this is a pat­tern of be­hav­iour which is en­dem­ic in the med­ical pro­fes­sion, then, of course, I would like them to take ac­tion,” George said.

He said con­fronting these is­sues will be for the good of so­ci­ety as a whole.

“While this may ap­pear to be an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent it rais­es this un­der­ly­ing ques­tion as to whether it rep­re­sents some sort of pat­tern of be­hav­iour and in that re­gard, I would like the med­ical board to take ac­tion.”

George said if this prob­lem is found to be per­va­sive in the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty, doc­tors should re­ceive sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing.

He said some­times, racial and deroga­to­ry state­ments are borne out of ig­no­rance and stu­pid­i­ty.

“But at the end of the day, there is no ex­cuse for not recog­nis­ing that we live in a mul­ti-cul­tur­al, mul­ti-eth­nic, mul­tira­cial so­ci­ety and we must there­fore be able to have that un­der­stand­ing, em­pa­thy and sen­si­tiv­i­ty to be able to ap­pre­ci­ate and em­pathise with oth­er peo­ple sit­u­a­tions even if they are from a dif­fer­ent so­cial back­ground, a dif­fer­ent class back­ground, dif­fer­ent eth­nic back­ground from our­selves.”