Dubai: When vitiligo affects your skin, it can change a lot about your life. How you look on the outside and your emotional wellbeing on the inside.
The skin condition, which leads to patchy skin, can cause depression and low self-esteem. Especially when people around you shy away from touching you when they think your ‘disease’ is contagious. Vitiligo is when some of your skin cells are lighter than other parts of your body and is one of the most common skin conditions in the world.
Ramy Gamal, an Egyptian musician, composer and singer, revealed in a touching Instagram post and tweet that he was suffering from vitiligo. He addressed his attempts to hide and cover up his skin in order to avoid making people around him feel uncomfortable. He explained that many around him had fears of getting ‘infected’.
Here's what Ramy wrote
“White spots started to appear on my body and I found out it was vitiligo. I tried various types of medicines and visited many doctors without any luck,” he said in his statement.
“The People who were around me started to notice the white patches on my skin and began to ask me all sorts of intrusive questions. They wanted to know if was contagious, what I would do with my career.
“Over the last year now, I have been trying to find ways to cover my skin, if I had to perform a concert or do some sort of filming. This caused a lot of stress in my life. Many of the people around me advised me to change my career path, because the said that most people will not accept me the way I am. This made me consider retiring.”
Rami revealed that he was considering retiring after he noticed some friends began to avoid him because of his condition, thinking that it was contagious.
“There were two options, either to retire my singing career completely despite my great passion for it, or I accept myself as I am. I am lucky to have a family that provides me with unconditional love and accepted me no matter what I look like.” concluded Gamal.
But that’s all it is. A look. In rare cases, people who have vitiligo could have eye problems due to irritation and hearing loss in severe cases. Other than that, you can just go about your life as usual. Vitiligo isn’t contagious and it isn’t a flesh eating disease. It is simply discoloration.
Hundreds of social media flooded his twitter and Instagram comment section with support.
One fan in particular tweeted "Dude you have a very nice voice and you're very talented and this illness has nothing to do with what you're creating as an artist so please hold on stay strong and keep on sharing your talent, people who like your voice will never leave your fandom for such a thing that you have have 0 control over.
Those who will stop supporting you were never there for your talent so it's a win-win for you! Such a nice soul God bless you, may God give you the strength to accept everything that you can not change and give you the happiness and peace of mind you deserve."
These include stars like singers Nancy Ajram, Tamer Hosny and Ellisa, actors Rana Samaha, Mohamed El Sharnouby and Rasha Mahdi just to name a few. Even football players Eslam Mohareb and Amr El Solia sent him a message of support.
