*Nigerian medical student Chidiebere Ibe, 25, has gone viral over his illustration of a Black fetus inside the womb of a Black woman.
As reported by NBC News, Ibe is a self-taught medical illustrator, with a focus on Black people in medical literature. He’s set to enter Kyiv Medical University in Ukraine next month with the goal of becoming a pediatric neurosurgeon.
“I wasn’t expecting it to go viral,” Ibe said of his image of a Black fetus that went viral this month. “I was just sticking up for what I believe in, advocating for equality in health through medical illustrations. I made a deliberate action to constantly advocate that there be inclusion of Black people in medical literature.”
See the viral post below. Supermodel Naomi Campbell commented, “Thank you,” along with an emoji heart.
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Here’s more about Ibe from NBC News:
He began publishing the images on social media, showing conditions like empyema thoracis and seborrheic eczema on Black skin. Many of the images show skin conditions prevalent with Black people, combating a misrepresentation that often leads to misdiagnosis. The fetus illustration went viral after a Twitter user shared the photo, writing, “I’ve literally never seen a black foetus illustrated, ever.” The post was retweeted more than 50,000 times, and the illustration garnered more than 88,000 “likes” on Instagram and even made its way to TikTok. Ibe drew praise from medical professionals far and wide.
“Little did I understand what the drawing meant to a lot of people. On my LinkedIn, on my Twitter, on my Instagram, I read the comments and they really touched me. I was crying,” Ibe said. “It was amazing to see how good people felt about it. People could see themselves in the drawing.”
Ibe was working under Dr. Ulrick Sidney Kanmounye at the Association of Future African Neurosurgeons when he realized: “The drawings I saw aren’t in Black skin.”
That’s when he decided to study medical illustration, focusing on Black skin.
Ni-ka Ford, chair of AMI’s diversity committee, noted that the lack of Black illustrations in anatomy/medical books highlights medical racism. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have noted that only 4.5 percent of images in general medicine textbooks show dark skin, per the report.
“The field is so closely connected to medicine and health care, which have a lot of roots in systemic racism. So that’s a big part of it,” Ford said. “Medical illustrations have historically have always been very predominately white and male centered. … A lot of textbooks have already been published and are already in the rounds around the world and they are very exclusionary in the visual content of people of different backgrounds.”
Hear more from Chidiebere Ibe in the YouTube clip above.
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