Binita Kane, MD, PhD, FRCP

Dr Binita Kane is a Consultant Respiratory Physician at Manchester University Foundation Trust (MFT) and an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Manchester. She has an interest in airways disease, integrated care, quality improvement and leadership. She is currently the MFT Senior Responsible Officer for the Hospital at Home Programme, the Clinical lead for the Greater Manchester Respiratory Health Innovation programme and the Community Respiratory Team in South Manchester.

Dr Kane worked on the front line of the COVID pandemic. In March 2020, she set up the first step-down COVID oximetry at home virtual ward in England and subsequently led the cross-system Manchester and Trafford COVID19 virtual ward Programme, spanning hospital and community settings. She co-authored The British Thoracic Society COVID19 guidance for Community Teams and worked with the NHS Chief People Officer as a member of the NHS BAME Clinical Advisory Group, advising NHS England on strategic issues and feeding back on what was required in relation to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minority ethnic groups and on vaccination uptake. She is a member of UK Independent SAGE which provided scientific briefings to the public throughout the pandemic.

In January 2021, Dr Kane’s (then 10yr old) daughter developed COVID19 infection and subsequently Long COVID. This has led her on an international search for answers, culminating in her becoming a campaigner, researcher, patient advocate, champion for the Long COVID Kids charity and now a specialist Long Covid physician. She now runs a specialist Long COVID clinic seeing patients from all over the UK.

Outside of medicine, after taking part in a BBC1 documentary about the British Partition of India in 1947, she has co-founded ‘South Asian Heritage Month’ in the UK, the first of which was launched online in July 2020. The campaign has grown quickly and in 2023, the month’s hashtag #southasianhertigagemonth reached 240 million people across the world on social media. The ambition is for the month to become an annual event in the UK calendar and aims to ‘Celebrate, Commemorate and Educate’ South Asian history and heritage with a higher goal of improving social cohesion throughout the UK.