In northern Nigeria, a woman is clearly distressed as she holds her two-year-old son, who has burns and discolored skin on his legs and face.
Under pressure from her family, the 32-year-old used skin-whitening creams on all six of her children, a decision she now regrets greatly.
Fatima, whose name has been altered to conceal her family’s identity, claims that one of her children hides her burns by covering her face whenever she goes out.
A third has whitish scars on her knees and lips, and another has darker skin than before with a pale circle around her eyes.
Her toddler’s skin is healing slowly, and he still has weeping wounds.
“My children had darker skin than my sister’s, who had light-skinned children. It really wounded my sentiments when I realized that my mother prefers my sister’s kids over mine because of their skin tone,” Fatima explains.
She claims that without a prescription from a doctor, she utilized lotions that she purchased from her neighborhood store in Kano.
