Health Disparities And Medical Training

One cause of the stunning health disparities revealed by patterns of Covid-19 infection and mortality may be the very way that medical personnel are trained—securely bracketed within cultural blinders. Common sense would suggest that illnesses and injury might likely present differently on different skin tones and that such variation would require more specific, granular attention in training doctors to make diagnoses. But apparently most medical training focuses exclusively on lighter skin. The chances therefore of misdiagnoses and errors on darker skin are increased. Such was the common sense conclusion of Malone Mukwende, a twenty year-old medical student who had the temerity to address this yawning oversight. As the U.S. and world populations grow blacker and browner in coming years, while the medical hierarchy stubbornly refuses to reflect this diversity, such revelations will probably become more numerous. Radical adjustment is called for.