Dr Chaand Nagpaul Biography

Dr Chaand Nagpaul is a general practitioner in North London and was the first ethnic minority Chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) Council from 2017 - 2022.   

Dr Nagpaul was born in Kenya and came to the UK together with his parents at the age of seven. He has dedicated his professional life to improving the working terms and conditions of doctors practicing in the UK and to lobbying for the NHS to be able deliver equitable, comprehensive quality care and address health inequalities. 

His national representative work began after being elected on to the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee (GPC) in 1996 and he was subsequently elected as its first ethnic minority chair in 2013. As the BMA’s GPs committee chair, he successfully negotiated a significant increase in investment in general practice and improved terms and conditions for GPs such as resources for GP maternity and sickness cover.  

In 2017, he was elected as the first ethnic minority chair of the BMA council in the Association’s 190-year history. As BMA Council chair, he represented the breadth of the medical profession across the UK to government and policy makers. He led a major BMA project, Caring, Supportive, Collaborative published in 2019, which describes a vision of a health service that is compassionate and supportive of its workforce, with a culture of learning rather than blame and rooted in collaboration between doctors and staff in general practice, the community, and hospitals.  

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Nagpaul represented the profession in crucial discussions with government and NHS leaders. He has been outspoken on the pressures affecting the NHS and frontline staff. Most notably he was one of the first national medical figures to publicly call out the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the ethnic minority community and healthcare professionals and demand a government inquiry to address this.

For many years, Dr Nagpaul has championed equality and fairness in healthcare. Now regarded as one of the leading advocates on tackling race inequality, he has also launched and chairs the BMA's first national forum for ethnic minority doctors. He is also a board member of the NHS Race and Health Observatory. 

As a GP, he has been a senior partner in his GP practice in North London for 33 years.

He has received multiple national accolades including being awarded a CBE in 2015 for services to primary care, a Fellowship of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and an Honorary Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health.  He is an alumnus of our 2019 Strategic Leadership Consultation.