NHS doctor Amir Khan, who regularly appears on ITV's Good Morning Britain and Lorraine, has revealed that he has sought police help after he was bombarded with a series of vile messages and death threats online, said recent reports.
Khan recently revealed that he has been receiving abusive messages over the past 18 months, which he believes are due to his stance as being pro-Covid vaccines.
"I've had so much trolling and online abuse," Daily Star quoted Khan in a report on Friday (6).
Strongly condemning the death threats he has been receiving, the Bradford-based GP and a familiar face on ITV daytime programmes have called on trolls to stop attacking him just because “he thinks different”.
"Everybody has the choice to get the vaccine or not. If you don't take it, that's your choice. Don't threaten me with violence or death because I think different to you,” he said.
Being a victim of online trolling since the start of the pandemic, Khan said that earlier he used to take them personally and had "sleepless nights" over it.
"I'd be out for food with my friends and I couldn't think of anything other than these awful messages I'd been getting,” Khan said.
Khan felt that lately, the threats have gotten “very personal and gone a step too far”.
"Some really personal attacks. Just the other day someone sent me a DM on Instagram telling me that they're going to 'kill me' or 'it won't be safe to leave my house',” he said, adding that he has “reported all this stuff to the police”.
The medic, who has worked for the NHS for over 17 years, believes the abuse comes from people who are "victims of misinformation" and have fallen down a "rabbit hole" of conspiracy theories.
Earlier this year, TV star Lorraine Kelly hit out at online trolls for abusing Khan. She said she was “furious” that he had been targeted by so-called anti-vaxxers.
As per the latest data, 58.3 per cent of the UK population are fully vaccinated against Covid-19. While a majority of the population flocked to the vaccine centres when it was time for their age group, a large section of society have developed anti-vax views since the start of the pandemic, reports said.
Khan has recently celebrated the release of the paperback edition of his book, The Doctor Will See You Now.
Damian Talbot