Woman tells US budget airline to educate workers after her eczema was mistaken for monkeypox

A woman with chronic eczema has accused a US budget airline of “medical discrimination” after she was allegedly removed from a flight amid concerns about monkeypox.

The encounter allegedly began when the woman, who said she was with her wife, was challenged by a Spirit airlines worker over her skin condition.

Taking to TikTok on Saturday, social media user Jacqueline (@jacqueline.ngu), said she was asked to leave her Spirit airlines flight in front of other passengers and was already seated when she was asked to leave.

“They had me get off the plane in front of everyone along with my wife to interrogate me about the eczema I’ve had my whole life,” she wrote in an overlay caption.

“They asked me to provide medical documents and told my wife to watch her attitude,” the TikTok user added. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

After showing her prescribed eczema cream to Spirit airlines, Jacqueline explained in a second video that she was eventually allowed back on board the same flight with her wife.

That was only after they voiced their own concerns about “medical discrimination” to an airport official, or CRO, Jacqueline wrote.

“We were able to board the flight again after I presented a tube of my prescribed eczema cream and my wife called out the CRO on being discriminatory (which is when she was told there was no need for an ‘attittude’),” she explained.

“This has happened to other people who were not so lucky to have ‘proof’,” she added. “Spirt Airlines, maybe teach your employees what monkeypox looks like before you catch hundreds of medical discrimination cases”.

The US has recorded more than 7,000 cases of probable or confirmed monkeypox since a global outbreak of the disease began in May, mostly among gay and bisexual men, the Associated Press reported last week.

The outbreak of monkeypox, which typically presents as a rash before lesions and scabs appear on the skin, has lead to incidents of public shaming in the US of those with various unrelated skin conditions.

Monkeypox is spread by “prolonged, face-to-face contact, or during intimate physical contact, such as kissing, cuddling, or sex,” according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and mostly amongst men who have sex with men however.

The Biden administration has made more than a million vaccines available to curb the rate of monkeypox infections in the US, while some 26,000 cases have been recorded globally outside of central and west Africa, where the disease is endemic in places.

The Independent has approached Spirit airlines for comment.