Actress and UN Special Representative for Refugees for 21 years Angelina Jolie published editorial in the American Journal of Nursing talking about new technology that can detect bruising in people with darker skin in cases of domestic violence. But the beginning of the article focuses on the shortcomings of medicine and research. “Often, medical research, examination, or training centers overlook ethnicity-specific injuries.” And he went on to talk about his personal experience:As a mother of children of different ethnic backgrounds, I have seen my children of color misdiagnosed.sometimes in a way that endangered their health.”
The eldest son, Maddox, was adopted in Cambodia, Zahara is Ethiopian, and Pax was born in Vietnam. From her marriage to Brad Pitt, she had a daughter, Shiloh, and twins, Knox and Vivienne. Although the actress has focused on helping survivors of domestic violence, she wanted to share one personal history as evidence.
“Speaking of personal experience, when my daughter Zahara from Ethiopia., she was admitted to the hospital for medical intervention, the nurse told me to call her if the skin near the cuts turned pink, ”recalled Jolie. “I stood looking at her blankly, not sure if she understood what was wrong with what she said. When she left the room, I spoke to her daughter, we both knew to look for signs of infection based on our knowledge, and not on what the nurse said, despite her undoubted good intentions.
Jolie added that while her family has “access to quality health care, simple diagnoses are left out due to race and the continued primacy of white skin in medicine.“. He added that at a societal level, racial disparities in health care affect the outcomes of millions of people and that “it’s time to make new decisions.”
Jolie’s intervention was appreciated by the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “Thanks to Angelina Jolie for speaking out against racism in medicine.” The actress is not the first time intervenes in matters related to health and medicine.. Some of her decisions, such as having a mastectomy and then an oophorectomy to reduce the risk of developing cancer associated with the Brca1-Brca2 gene mutation she carries, have opened up discussion and hastened some progress in prevention, but above all, they have raised people’s awareness .