When a straightforward medical illustration of a fetus nestled within its mother’s womb was posted to Instagram in December, one simple detail propelled it across the internet, where it received more than 50,000 retweets on Twitter and more than 104,000 likes on Instagram.
The detail? The mother and fetus were Black.
Illustration by Chidiebere Ibe
Other medical doctors and nurses made similar observations. Dr. Ramla N. Kasozi, a family medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, tweeted that it was her “first time seeing a medical illustration with a Black woman carrying a Black fetus.”
The illustrator behind the viral picture is 25-year-old Chidiebere Ibe, a Nigerian medical student and aspiring neurosurgeon, who describes himself as a self-taught artist.
He says he first took up illustrating medical conditions and human anatomy in July 2020, when it was becoming clear that COVID-19 lockdowns weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Needing a way to make money as he prepared to enter medical school, Ibe turned to a mentor who suggested that he combine his love of art and medicine by working as a medical illustrator. By the end of the year, Ibe had become creative director of the Journal of Global Neurosurgery.
From his very first illustration, he says he intentionally chose to color Black skin.
