Black Med Student Creates Guidebook to Understanding and Diagnosing Dark-Skinned Patients

Black Med Student Creates Guidebook to Understanding and Diagnosing Dark-Skinned Patients

August 2, 2021

In his first year of medical school, Malone Mukwende noticed that there were no depictions of dark skin in his textbooks and lessons.

So last November, he joined forces with two staff members at the school, St. George’s, University of London, to create a guide, "Mind the Gap," showing how clinical conditions appear on dark skin.

“My motivations to create the book came from lived experiences like having people within my own community almost having a distrust for health care professionals because they have heard stories of misdiagnosis or had been misdiagnosed,” Mukwende, 20, told NBC News.

“There's certain points where I knew for certain that in darker skin or skin, like my own,” the diagnosis “would not be the same,” he said. At times, he added, it made him feel alienated.

Now in his second year, Mukwende said in an interview with the British Medical Journal that he was inspired to create the guidebook as a way to help medical practitioners better understand and diagnose darker-skinned patients.

Read the source article at NBC News

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