Dr Manisha Desai
For most of its history, dermatology learned to read illness on pale skin. Dr Manisha spends her days making sure brown skin is finally read as carefully.
She has been a GP across the NHS and private practice since gaining her MRCGP in 2017, with a diploma in women's health (DRCOG) alongside it. She then became a GP with a Special Interest in dermatology, and trained specifically in Skin of Colour Dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Seeing what others were taught to miss
Today she practises as a dermatology GP with a Special Interest at Harrow Health CIC, an NHS-commissioned community service, and directs her own practice, Dr Manisha Desai Ltd. She has contributed to international work on gender and health equity, always returning to the same question: who does medicine assume the patient looks like.
Your skin was never an afterthought. Medicine just needed to catch up.
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