A team of researchers are raising epilepsy awareness in Ethiopia using an educational comic book – which 90 per cent of health professionals would recommend.

It is estimated that some 520 people in every 100,000 have epilepsy in Ethiopia – yet few Ethiopians possess sufficient understanding of the condition and many have negative and often dangerous attitudes towards it, due to misinformation and religious and cultural beliefs.

These statistics have inspired teams of researchers from France and Ethiopia to join forces for a cross-sectional study, geared at finding effective methods of raising epilepsy awareness.

A comic book entitled We’ll Make It was developed by researchers in a bid to promote positive attitudes towards the position – and tested amongst 126 randomly selected students from two secondary schools.

Students completed an epilepsy questionnaire before and after reading the comic book, and researchers found that the vast majority of both rural and city-based students gained “a great deal of information” from the comic book and its content.

Researchers hope that further distribution of the comic book could change misconceptions about the condition across the country.

Of 40 health professionals, including neurologists, psychiatrists, GPs and nurses, 90 per cent recommended the comic book as “useful educational material to be distributed among school children.”