Script: Fella Benabed | Graphic design: Meriem Harkat |
Subject matter review: Quentin G. Eichbaum and Hacene Brouk
How to Navigate This Graphic Narrative
To read through the narrative, hover over the first page of the English or Arabic version and then use the arrows at the bottom of the page to navigate through the story.
English VersionRahma-and-Rajaa-c1
Arabic VersionRahma-and-Rajaa-Arabic-c1
Artist Statement
Green and Myers (2010) observe, “Although graphic pathographies are often thematically similar to standard textual accounts of illness, their powerful visual messages convey immediate visceral understanding in ways that conventional texts cannot.” Prior scholarship on pathographies concentrated on cancer, infertility, and menopause; our work extends this conceptual terrain into transfusion medicine, which we have termed “blood pathographies.”
The pathography, “Rahma and Rajaa: A Tale of Pain and Hope,” has been created as part of a conference presentation titled “The Use of Blood Pathographies in Global Health Humanities: A Strategy for Patient Education and Donor Mobilization,” co-presented with Quentin G. Eichbaum at the second CITSA Blood Transfusion Congress, held in November 2025, in Annaba, Algeria.
The script has been written in Arabic and English. Two blood transfusion specialists, Quentin G. Eichbaum (Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, NY, USA) and Hacene Brouk (Annaba University Hospital, Algeria) checked the scientific accuracy of the script. Meriem Harkat, a graphic designer, manually transformed it into sequential art.
This interdisciplinary initiative puts into practice the convergence of global health humanities and graphic medicine to serve two distinct yet interconnected audiences: young patients with transfusion-dependent conditions and their potential blood donors. Our work invites public health stakeholders to recognize the value of artistic methods, both as vehicles for disease literacy and psychosocial care among pediatric populations. It also relies on the rhetorical principles of “logos, ethos, and pathos” to invite healthy readers to reflect on the moral obligation of blood donation.
This product can be distributed freely for patient education and blood donation promotion.
References
Green, M. J., & Myers, K. R. (2010). Graphic medicine: Use of comics in medical education and patient care. British Medical Journal, 340, c863. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c863
Guiding Questions
Consider the following questions after viewing the graphic narrative:
- Did engaging with this graphic narrative elicit an emotional response? How did your response to the graphic narrative differ from how you might react to a more clinical case description?
- What impact do the children’s voices, fears, and hopes have on your view of patient care? What about blood donation?
- How does the graphic narrative appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos? In what ways can using and adapting these rhetorical appeals contribute to a more human-centered approach to patient care?
- What does this graphic narrative communicate about global health humanities and your understanding of transfusion medicine in different cultural settings?
- How could you adapt the strategies employed by this graphic narrative to improve disease literacy and/or encourage altruistic acts (like blood donation) in your workplace or community?
About the Author
Fella Benabed is a professor of global anglophone literature and postcolonial studies at Badji Mokhtar-Annaba University, Algeria. She is a former Fulbright scholar (Columbia University, 2021), Certified Fellow of the Global Arts in Medicine Fellowship (2024), member of the Global South Arts and Health Envoy (2024), and member of the Global Health Humanities Working Group at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH). She is the author of Applied Global Health Humanities: Readings in the Global Anglophone Novel, prefaced by Paul Crawford and part of the series Medical & Health Humanities: Aesthetics, Analyses, Approaches (De Gruyter Brill, 2024), edited by Mita Banerjee, Monika Pietrzak-Franger, and Anita Wohlmann. Additionally, she is the author of “Fanonist Health Humanities” in the Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities (Springer Nature, 2021), edited by Paul Crawford and Paul Kadetz.
