IN RESPONSE to Alex Wynick’s ‘Asian women facing barriers to see their GP’ (September 26), the stumbling blocks often encountered in this respect by such ladies are undisputed, not to mention, in some cases, certain additional impediments which she or her seniors were perhaps too tactful or timid to print.

I was nonetheless disgusted by the article’s flagrant omission of the self-evident point that, with a few obvious exceptions, far greater encouragement at very least, should be given to those concerned to make more of an effort to learn the official tongue or, in some instances, be allowed to.

Today’s letters

Anywhere on this sad little orb, the onus is upon immigrants, of any race or creed, to integrate (without necessarily surrendering their belief systems, voluntary of externally imposed, or private cultural practices) into their adopted society, with some of the solutions proposed to the problem in question being frankly downright ridiculous.

It is the prerogative, not duty, of the indigenous to make concessions.

It never occurred to me to go and reside in a country without having more or less mastered its principal language, nor even to visit one without a working knowledge of the local lingo.

DAVID DIMENT

Riverside Court

Oxford

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