A documentary drama on the genetics of hearing impairment produced by the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), has been selected as part of 20 winners for this year’s Falling Walls Engage contest and pitched before a global audience at the Falling Walls Engage Science Summit in Berlin held from November 07 -09, 2021.

The documentary drama, produced with funding support from the Wellcome Trust, is intended to be used as a tool to engage the public, especially deaf communities, as well as other communities, on the genetics underlying deafness and to dispel long-held misconceptions regarding the condition.

Winners for the Science Engagement category, which included WACCBIP, were selected out of 50 outstanding finalists and many more excellent applications. The other categories were Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Social Sciences and Humanities. The rest are Arts and Science, Future Learning, Science and Innovation Management, and Science Start-ups.

 Ms. Kyerewaa Boateng, Public Engagement Officer at WACCBIP, who pitched the audiovisual feature before the audience, took them through the stages in the making of the drama as well as the various ways in which WACCBIP engages communities with its research outcomes; a case in point being the research on the genetics of hearing impairment in Ghana. She also expressed her excitement about the fact that all the efforts put into the making of this public engagement tool have been recognised at an international level.

“Our docu-drama is the first of its kind. Performed by deaf persons and has become an effective tool in passing on information to our target audience. Deaf persons can easily relate with its content as it dramatizes the whole information in a very educative, friendly, and culturally acceptable manner," -Ms. Kyerewaa Boateng

 The Falling Walls Summit is a unique international annual gathering of leaders from science, business, government, and the arts in Berlin, Germany. Inspired by the peaceful fall of the Berlin Wall on November 09,1989, and it was first held on November 09, 2009, -20 years later. The question of every Falling Walls meeting is: “Which are the next walls to fall in science and society?”

WACCBIP Climaxes Month-long Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign