“If we don’t make it plain, we’re never going to address it or get through it”
For a few days after May 16, 2020, Dr. Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis was in a safe space or so she thought.
Hlatshwayo (pronounced “Shla-ch-why-o”) Davis, an infectious disease physician at Washington University School of Medicine, was on maternity leave at the time. Isolated at home with her newborn and her 4-year-old daughters, she was temporarily sheltered from a pandemic that was raging across the globe. But then, nine days after delivering her baby, another harsh reality invaded her sanctuary: the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Media images of the killing struck her on several levels. As a mom, it was difficult watching Floyd die while calling out to his dead mother. As a doctor, it was hard to watch a man expire while given no medical attention. And, as a woman of color, she was once again reminded of the fragility of Black life at the hands of police.
“It broke me.” Hlatshwayo Davis explained. “It was trauma. It still is. I have been experiencing acute and chronic trauma and yet I’m expected to just show up and smile through these mini and micro aggressions.”
Hlatshwayo Davis found motivation in the hypocritic oath of charity, mercy, and kindness that doctors like her are supposed to practice when caring for patients.
“At the end of the day, if I’m not taking care of the most disenfranchised and marginalized, then why am I really doing this?”
The impact of the HIV epidemic on her native country, Zimbabwe, drew her into the field of infectious diseases. When she was 15, her father died from complications related to liver cancer. At the same time, HIV was spreading rapidly in Zimbabwe and its capital city, Harare, where Hlatshwayo Davis was born.
She said her father’s death and the HIV pandemic influenced her to pursue a career that addresses acute and chronic infections caused by bacteria, parasites, fungi, or viruses, such as COVID-19.
Hlatshwayo Davis uses her stature, knowledge and public platforms to attack systemic and structural racism. She argues that it is the real reason people of color are dismissed, denied and disenfranchised. For example, in an August 2020 Newsweek commentary, Hlatshwayo Davis candidly spoke to the profound health disparities that arise from structural racism.
“We have seen it time and again in HIV, sickle cell anemia, heart attacks, strokes, colon cancer, obstetrical care, organ transplants and many other instances. COVID-19 joins a long list,” Hlatshwayo Davis wrote, adding: “These disparities are not differences due to genes or biology — these are differences that directly arise from the way people are socially divided and treated differently.”
“Just Call Me Mati”
Hlatshwayo Davis was recently appointed to the St. Louis City Board of Health. She is also co-chair of “Fast Track Cities, St. Louis,” an initiative with a goal of reaching zero new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths in the region by 2030. Although her job, her writings and commentaries are demonstratively serious, the doctor has an infectious sense of humor and down-to-earth personality. Recognizing that her name was difficult to pronounce, she jokingly suggested: “Just call me Mati.” Humor, she added, is a prerequisite in her profession.
“To be the only Black person in the department and in a pandemic and have had a pandemic baby … you got to have all the jokes,” Hlatshwayo Davis explained.
“One of my skill sets is being able to bring a realness and humor that hopefully disarm people’s defense mechanisms so that we can acknowledge things and start to come up with real, tangible solutions. For that, I am unapologetic.”
The doctor addresses many inconvenient truths. In the Newsweek commentary she expressed concern about the rush to find a COVID-19 vaccine and how it may leave disenfranchised communities out of the process.
“Alarmingly few” Black and Latinx individuals have been included in the vaccination trails, she wrote, stressing how this demographic is “five times as likely to be hospitalized due to COVID-19 compared to white patients.”
Hlatshwayo Davis rejects the notion that her positions on structural racism are “bold.”
“For me, it’s not about being contentious or bold. It’s about speaking truth and leading with compassion. The underlying definition of implicit bias means it’s unconscious. We are all susceptible. But if we don’t make it plain, we’re never going to address it or get through it.”
Hlatshwayo Davis strongly advocates that people of color get vaccinated against the coronavirus. There is no contradiction, she added, between questioning the vaccination trials and stressing the dire need to get vaccinated.
“Three months ago, positive pressure needed to be applied. Integrity needed to be upheld.Now, we need to move forward with helping our communities.”
There are many similarities between the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics, Hlatshwayo Davis said. How both impacted the media, church, and social life; the stigma, shame and politicization of the diseases are comparable. The lessons learned in attacking HIV, she added, should be applied to the coronavirus. And that, she said, is her mission.
“This is the corner of earth I choose to inhabit and how I choose to use the gifts that God has given me in this period and time. I don’t know how long this will be required or if it will continue to be a space I choose to occupy.
“But for now, this is the place I choose to be.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is The St. Louis American’s inaugural Deaconess COVID Fellow.