'What’s up, fellow deadly diseases?': Creative arts and communicating COVID-19 in Ghana

de-Graft Aikins, Ama (2024) 'What’s up, fellow deadly diseases?': Creative arts and communicating COVID-19 in Ghana. In: Lewis, Monique, Govender, Eliza and Holland, Kate, (eds.) Communicating COVID–19: Media, Trust, and Public Engagement. Springer International (Firm), 261 - 283. ISBN 9783031412363

Text (Arts and communicating Covid in Ghana - Chapter Post Review - Ama de-Graft Aikins- 02Nov22) - Accepted Version Download (929kB)

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Abstract

In a comedy sketch that went viral on Ghanaian social media in January 2021, coronavirus arrives late at a meeting. “What’s up, fellow deadly diseases?” coronavirus says, as malaria, cholera and AIDS jump up from their seats and rush for their face masks. This sketch illustrated one way in which Ghanaians were making sense of the pandemic during its second wave, when infections, hospitalizations and deaths were rising rapidly. While Covid-19 is a new and unique pandemic, devastating public health threats—such as the 1918 Spanish flu, yellow fever and HIV/AIDS—are longstanding and omnipresent in Ghana. The sketch also joined a new genre of ‘covid arts’—including music, murals, cartoons, and textiles—that had tracked social and scientific responses to the pandemic since March 2020. Like HIV and Ebola arts, covid art forms communicated the complexity of the pandemic—often weaving medical, political, religious, economic and historical strands. In my chapter I will outline the ways in which ‘covid arts’ have communicated the science and culture of covid-19 in Ghana and discuss two core insights. First, covid arts contribute to public understanding of the pandemic in more critical ways than standard health promotion interventions. I will argue that the arts should not be seen as an added feature to health communication, but as the core feature, as they tap into imagination, memory, emotions, thinking, embodiment and sociality. Second, covid arts conscientise. I will discuss the ways some art forms theorise—and educate on—the coloniality of Ghanaian health policymaking and its material impact on the current pandemic response. I will then consider how arts-based health communication can be improved and how more meaningful connections can be created between the arts and the sciences in public health in Ghana.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author, under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Divisions:	Methodology
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2025 15:06
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2025 16:15
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128359

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