Last month, my daughter developed a skin condition. It started with her tummy being covered in a rash, which later spread to her back and soon covered her whole body. Within days, my son also caught this rash. Needless to say, as a parent, I was beside myself during this time. 

Considering how overwhelmed the GPs are and how difficult it could prove to get an appointment, I decided to use the NHS website symptoms checker. 

I was terribly disappointed to see that I could not find symptoms that were representative of my children’s skin colour. For every possible skin condition I looked up, the symptoms were tailored to white/paler skin tones: “Red blotches” “Red spots”.

However, as my children are black, they won’t have the said redness or pinkness. I found the lack of representation very unsatisfactory. 

Whilst I appreciate that there are some common conditions such as Chickenpox and Eczema that the NHS website models on black skin, I believe that more can and should be done to ensure that this is symptom-wide and covers ALL skin conditions.

Everyone should be able to use the website, regardless of skin colour. 

The NHS website needs to describe and illustrate how skin conditions would present on black and brown skin and not just on white skin alone.