Angelina Jolie Reveals Daughter Zahara Experienced Medical Bias After Surgery

Angelina Jolie has opened up about how the systemic biases in medicine affected her daughter Zahara's post-surgery care.

In a Time magazine interview, Jolie spoke to 21-year-old medical student Malone Mukwende, who is aiming to teach others how race plays a role in patient care.

"Recently my daughter, Zahara, whom I adopted from Ethiopia, had surgery, and afterward a nurse told me to call them if her skin 'turned pink,'" the actress shared.

Jolie further spoke about the lack of knowledge surrounding conditions and diseases' appearances in non-white patients.

"I have children from different backgrounds, and I know when there was a rash that everybody got, it looked drastically different depending on their skin color. But whenever I looked at medical charts, the reference point was always white skin," she explained.

Mukwende — who recently launched both a handbook "Mind the Gap" and what he describes as a "health social platform" called Hutano — said he took note of that bias "very early on" in his medical studies.

"Almost the entirety of medicine is taught in that way," he explained. "There’s a language and a culture that exists in the medical profession, because it’s been done for so many years and because we are still doing it so many years later it doesn’t seem like it’s a problem. However, like you’ve just illustrated, that’s a very problematic statement for some groups of the population because it’s just not going to happen in that way and if you’re unaware you probably won’t call the doctor."

Jolie went on to ask Mukwende what he wanted to achieve. The medical student explained that his projects aim to give everyone a platform to empower their health care literacy. For example, people with eczema can discuss their condition and the creams they use on the platform with others who are experiencing the same issue.

"We want to give people the platform to be able to discuss these things. We need to start empowering the individual, and that, I hope, will start to reduce some of the health care disparities that exist," he added.

Jolie revealed in a Times essay in March that two of her daughters had undergone surgery. She shared that her daughters "stopped everything and put each other first and felt the joy of being of service to those they love."

Jolie is also mother to Maddox, 19, Pax, 17, Shiloh, 15, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 12.