Derbyshire researcher spreading message of long COVID
'Shedding Light on Long Covid' is at Derby's Museum of Making until the 9th of October
A Derbyshire researcher is hoping his brand new exhibition highlights the 'life-changing' impact of long COVID.
'Shedding Light on Long COVID' is at Derby's Museum of Making until the 9th of October.
It is a sci-art public realm project which explores the condition. For 2 years - the S.H.E.D have been developing a community led artistic & clinical research project.
Mark Faghy is one of the experts from the University of Derby, who've been working alongside artists on the display, he wants to bring to light the stories behind the statistics: "Locally it’s between seven and a half thousand and ten thousand people who have had a Covid infection and not made that full recovery.
"Through the research that we done prior to the pandemic it was all about trying to understand why people have to be poorly and can’t go back to being themselves...
"That story began to emerge throughout 2020 and we felt that we could use the knowledge we learnt previously to help those people with long Covid."
Mark said he is worried COVID being allowed to circulate, people chances of living with long COVID will increase: "The data pointing us in the direction that this is lasting you know close to over two years in some people and it’s a really debilitating and unpredictable condition.
"I think that’s probably the hardest part of it is you might think you’re on a trajectory towards recovery then all of a sudden you can feel very poorly again.
"With 'shedding light on long COVID' - I try and use all of that research data to provide public awareness and opportunities for people to come and engage and learn about long COVID so they can see for themselves the impact it has on patients.
"There’s a quote that I use regularly in my meetings and it’s 'you have become a shadow of your former self' and probably the biggest narrative is people loose their identity for being who they are as individuals.
"The Derby County Community Trust long COVID service are going to bring their patients here for one of their monthly meetings so that they can also engage with the session but there’s a whole kind of raft of activities that are going to be happening over the course of the four weeks."