Medical Racism, Casual or Overt, Has No Place in Patients’ Lives
Ta’Rajee Omar had no reason to believe that she had HIV until her ophthalmologist called her on Veterans Day 2020. She’d visited him two days previously at her eye care center in Detroit to discuss a scratch on her retina, so she was not surprised to hear from him even though it was a national holiday.
During their conversation, he insisted that she return immediately to get tested for HIV. As a personal friend of mine, Omar reached out to me for support. My initial concern that she might lose vision in one of her eyes quickly turned to dismay upon hearing her doctor’s suspicions.