Chidiebere Ibe, a Nigerian medical student at Ukraine’s Kyiv Medical University, has begun getting attention in his move to change the narrative of white people being used for medical illustrations in textbooks.
Mr Ibe, a native of Ebonyi State, features black men, women and children in his illustrations.
On November 24, Ibe posted a drawing of a Black foetus in utero on social media, calling for more diversity in medical illustration.
“Black Pregnant Woman Illustration by @ebereillustrate Diversity in medical illustration,” he wrote.
His drawing struck a chord with viewers, many of whom had never realised they had never seen a black figure in medical diagrams. Since then, his post has received close to 74,000 likes on Instagram, plus over 2,000 shares on Twitter.
Ibe taught himself to draw during lockdown. He is the chief medical illustrator and creative director of the Journal of Global Neurosurgery and plans to become a pediatric neurosurgeon.
Speaking with Artnet News, Ibe said, “It’s not a norm for the physician to care properly,” noting that the lack of understanding of how diseases can appear for black patients can lead to “mortality, childbirth pains, wrong diagnosis (and) communication problems.”
Ibe has set up a GoFundMe page to help fund his education and to promote the need for black representation in medical illustrations for textbooks, public-health materials, and other publications. To date, he has raised £24,723 ($32,873), far exceeding his original goal of £15,400 ($21,400).
“I never expected it to be viral,” he told HuffPost UK. “The whole purpose was to keep talking about what I’m passionate about—equity in healthcare—and also to show the beauty of Black people.”
