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Doctors may be missing illnesses because UK medical textbooks often focus on white people

A comparison of the fungal infection tinea manuum on different skin colours.

There are concerns that illnesses are being missed and that patients are being misdiagnosed following criticism that mainstream medical resources fail to show signs and symptoms of skin conditions on people of colour.

It is acknowledged skin conditions differ for every skin type and colour.

But what if finding examples of what the conditions look like on your skin tone do not exist or are hard to find? Worse still, what if a medical professional has never seen the symptoms on your skin colour?

It is the perceived lack of accessible diverse imagery which Tariq Hussein believes led to a delay in being diagnosed with a rare skin condition, Devergie's disease.

He had grown up with a brief spell of eczema, so when his skin became inflamed and irritated when he was older, he sought medical advice to get treatment.

There were a number of visits that followed. He was prescribed medication to treat impetigo and psoriasis, all of which had no effect.

The condition worsened and caused him increasing pain. It was only months later that a dermatologist suggested it might be Devergie's.

Tariq believes the condition would have been identified sooner had a more diverse collection of imagery been available.

"You'd think there would be more than one skin type which has this same disease as me," he said.

"You could easily take pictures from around the world of different skin colours to see the way it presents in different ways. The fact that I had to go back two or three times before I got a proper referral and diagnosis did concern me, and it does put me off a little bit.

"Every time I go to the doctor and get told something is fine, I go away and think they must know what they're talking about, but in the back of my mind I'm thinking, I hope they know what they're talking about."

It is a concern shared by university medical student Malone Mukwende, who noticed phrasing in his textbooks was an issue.

Symptoms such as a patient being described as "becoming pale" and their "lips turning blue" did not apply to people with darker skin.

With the help of his lecturers at St George's, University of London, he has created Mind The Gap - a clinical handbook for people of colour.

The aim is to help medical professionals recognise conditions on darker skinned patients.

Malone said: "I noticed it was a problem in my first year of university. We weren't being taught enough on darker skins, and I knew this was an issue because I looked at the symptoms we were being presented with in textbooks and online resources, and I'd try and translate and apply that knowledge to darker skin tones and I found that most of the time it just doesn't translate in the same way."

Ethnic dermatology has been explored for decades, but lots of the material is not widely accessible.

Many online resources tend to show what symptoms look like on Caucasian skin, often leaving people with black or brown skin having to do the guesswork if their symptoms are comparable.

Tessa Davis, a paediatric consultant at the Royal London Hospital, is passionate about improving diversity in her sector.

After hearing about the issue from her patients, she, along with dermatology colleagues, began collating images of skin conditions on various skin tones online for free.

Tessa said: "I work in a very diverse community with lots of children who present with different skin conditions every day.

"Last week we had a family come in with a baby with eczema and they were looking up pictures of eczema online because we know that's what families do.

"All they saw when they looked online were images of babies with eczema who had white skin and it didn't reflect their child - and it didn't reflect what they were looking at."

The project, called Skin Deep, aims to improve education and patient care.

Tessa says healthcare is universal and therefore should have the ability to help everyone.

"It shouldn't matter what type of skin you have or what type of condition you have, we should be able to recognise it and we need to be part of reflecting that in the educational material that's available online. That will help improve the care we deliver in our patients," she added.

The General Medical Council, which is responsible for medical education in the UK, has made a commitment to offer guidance that would change the curriculum.

In a statement to Sky News, Professor Colin Melville, medical director and director of education and standards at the GMC, said: "We will work with the UK's medical schools on guidance that includes ethnically diverse examples of case presentations in their curricula.

"It's important that we continue to listen and act to make sure diversity is properly represented in all aspects of medical teaching and learning."

Medical educators from across the UK have arranged a meeting with Malone and his lecturers who wrote Mind The Gap.

A spokesperson from the Medical Schools Council said: "Medical schools understand that there remain issues around diversity and inclusion in medical education and it is vital that this is addressed in curricula development.

"The Medical Schools Council's executive committee has recently approved a plan which aims to improve equality, diversity and inclusion within UK medical schools.

"The first stage of this work includes bringing medical students together to discuss their experiences of racism at medical school and on placements in the NHS.

"By consulting with medical students, we aim to introduce overarching guidance for medical schools on creating inclusive environments, as well as more specific recommendations for improving representation of diverse populations within medical school curricula."