20-year-old med student creates guide for diagnosing skin conditions on darker skin tones

Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the images of skin conditions or symptoms in medical school textbooks are of people with white skin. And that can pose a real challenge when it comes to diagnosing people with black or brown skin.

But one 20-year-old med student at St. George’s University of London is changing that. 

“If I could put a number on it, I would say that 97% percent of the imagery we use or are taught on is on white skin,” Malone Mukwende told FOX 5 NY in his first American TV interview via Zoom from London.

Mukwende created a guidebook called “Mind the Gap: A handbook of Clinical Signs in Black and Brown Skin.”

“Because it didn’t feel that the teaching we’re getting is inclusive of all the patients that we are going to serve.”

As the modest med student will be the first to tell you, he isn’t the first to come up with an idea like this, but it’s never been received with the type of reaction it’s being met with today.

“People [now] are becoming receptive to what is going on,” he says.

And what’s going on is a national and international movement for social justice, brought about in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Not only are professors at St George’s University going to begin using Mukwende’s guide— still in digital format— this fall, but the school confirms they’re having ongoing discussions with publishers as well.  And Mukwende says he is getting upwards of 100 emails a day from schools or doctors worldwide who want to put the guide to use.

The student— who would not even be of legal drinking age in the United States— offered this advice to anyone who thinks the road to change is too difficult.

“You’re never too small. The smallest dominos can knock over the tallest towers. Even mosquitos make grown men lose sleep at night. So you’re just never too small to make a change and you should just start to make that change right now.”