Summary: When polio vaccines were first developed, many experts thought the disease would be fully eradicated within decades. Tragically, as this film shows, it has survived in places like Afghanistan and northern Nigeria. These locations are now acting as disease reservoirs, with children the hardest-hit demographic and with travelers re-infecting other countries once thought invulnerable....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2004
View online at AVOD
Summary: A killer flu outbreak isn't just a developing-world nightmare. The influenza virus is so adaptable that the West is as vulnerable as anywhere else. This program outlines the history of influenza and explores current research into what steps, if any, might prevent a future flu pandemic. Viewers are shown how the virus mutates to resist vaccines and has an uncanny ability to jump species...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: New and lethal strains of TB are emerging worldwide which cannot be treated by conventional drugs. One estimate puts the number of new MDR TB cases per year as high as 400,000. After 40 years without any research into new drugs, the race is on to find a cure for MDR TB. This program travels between Peru and South Korea as it examines both the current impact of TB super strains in the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: On World AIDS Day 2003, WHO and UNAIDS released a detailed and concrete plan to reach the 3 by 5 target of providing antiretroviral treatment to three million people living with AIDS in developing countries and those in transition by the end of 2005. It was a vital step toward the ultimate goal of providing universal access to AIDS treatment to all those who need it. This program travels to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In an increasingly global society, disease outbreaks are on the rise-and so is the need for epidemiology expertise. This program introduces students to vital information regarding the transmission, clinical features, diagnosis, treatment, vectors, prevention, and control of several communicable diseases. Students receive vital information on zoonotic diseases such as SARS, Rift Valley fever,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: The prescription of antibiotics is a medical tightrope-walk. The drugs save lives, but, because of overuse, may soon usher in a new era of super-germs. This program outlines the discoveries of bacteria and penicillin and sheds light on the frightening emergence of multi-resistant, often deadly microbes during the last six decades. Presenting interviews with researchers who are deeply involved...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Around the world, hospitals have become known for something other than healing-in fact, quite the opposite. This program follows the challenges faced by various hospitals, many of them state-of-the-art facilities, that have become hosts to nearly invincible germs. Focusing on the bacteria known as MRSA, the video goes inside French, German, and Dutch hospitals battling the sinister and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Despite its amorous nickname, the vinchuca, or kissing bug, actually gives its sleeping victims a malevolent bite sucking blood and transmitting a microscopic parasite called Tripanisoma cruzi. The microbe, in turn, produces Chagas disease, which currently afflicts 16 million people in South America and will kill a quarter of them in middle age. This program travels into the mountain villages...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Among the research and funding experts of the global health community, the "Big Three" diseases are AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. As urgent as it is to fight these illnesses, many others also need attention and aren't getting it. These "forgotten diseases" include elephantiasis (or lymphatic filariasis), bilharzia (or schistosomiasis), and river blindness (or onchocerciasis), among others....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: More and more drug-resistant strains of Haemophilus influenzae type b bacteria (Hib) have emerged in recent years, and the consequences of late or no treatment are devastating. The microbe is estimated to cause at least 3 million cases of serious disease-often meningitis-and up to 700,000 deaths each year among young children. This program examines the tragic problem in Bangladesh, where the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Lymphatic filariasis, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease commonly known as elephantiasis, results in massive swelling of the limbs and genitals, leading to severe disability. Over 40 million people are seriously incapacitated and disfigured by it, with millions more at risk. Now an ambitious campaign is underway to eliminate the disease globally by interrupting its transmission. Two...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: February 21, 2003, was just a normal day at Hotel Metropole in Hong Kong—until a guest, infected with SARS, became patient zero for an epidemic that rapidly infected people in dozens of countries around the world. This program—part dramatization, part documentary—illustrates how the SARS virus spread and was gradually contained. In addition, virology experts shed light on topics ranging from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Striking in areas where vaccines tend to be out of reach, the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami produced fears of an immediate cholera epidemic. But one district in southern India showed the world how to defy the odds, clearing contaminated debris and working with UNICEF to distribute clean water, thus keeping cholera at bay without the help of drugs. This film travels to Tamil Nadu where aid workers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Avian influenza A (H5N1) has successfully made the leap from poultry to people. Is a human-to-human pandemic inevitable? Using Southeast Asia as a case study, this Wide Angle report looks at the Vietnamese government's efforts to contain the disease while educating its population. In addition, Bill Moyers speaks with Dr. Anthony Fauci, of the National Institutes of Health, about how this lethal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program travels to Cambodia, where 1 in 10 people carry hepatitis B, a major cause of liver cancer. Mothers often transmit the virus to their babies during childbirth, and children can pass the infection to each other through even the most minor cuts and scratches. At London's Hammersmith Hospital, pioneering new surgery makes it possible for patients to survive advanced liver cancer. In...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Over a half-million women in the world get cervical cancer every year, with nearly 80 percent in developing countries. Human papilloma virus (HPV) causes the cancer and is therefore among the worst instigators of female cancer mortality worldwide. A vaccine is now available against the disease, but how effective is it, and can it save lives in poor, remote regions as well as wealthy areas? This...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: At an overwhelmed hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India, young children struggle for their lives. The threat initially appears like the flu or other illnesses, so it often goes misdiagnosed and treated with useless antibiotics until a more experienced doctor sees the patient. By then, it is often too late to prevent either death or severe brain damage. The film provides a glimpse of India's 2005...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: It is estimated that every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria. Medicines continue to be the main tool in fighting it-but, with growing resistance to existing drugs, there is an urgent need to discover new ones and distribute them at affordable prices in poor, disease-endemic countries. The major obstacle to the discovery of new anti-malarials is the lack of global investment in drug research...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: An avian influenza epidemic will almost certainly begin where poultry is slaughtered in poorly managed, unsanitary conditions. This semi-dramatized program starts in rural Cambodia, where a mutated H5N1 virus spreads easily from an infected chicken into the local population and prompts a swift response from World Health Organization field workers. Depicting the WHO containment strategy in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Armed with high-tech tools, blood samples, and a small army of fieldworkers, Nathan Wolfe hopes to re-invent epidemiology. In the process, he also pursues the hidden secrets of Earth's dominant life form: viruses. In this TEDTalk, Wolfe outlines a strategy for outwitting the next pandemic by identifying new viruses where they first emerge - among poor subsistence hunters in Africa. Wolfe...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: From SARS to the swine flu, viruses that threaten the developed world seem to be growing in ranks. Even as medical science rises to the challenge, our knowledge of viruses is filled with troubling gaps and bewildering realities. Starting on the virus front lines-the rainforests of central Africa-this program unlocks the truth about nature's greatest terror weapons. Viewers learn why HIV is such...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne infection, which affects some 50 million people annually. It is now endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, South America, the Eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific. This program journeys to Thailand to join scientists at the forefront of the fight to contain and eliminate Dengue. Viewers learn about one of the principal challenges...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: What did the 2009 swine-origin H1N1 outbreak teach us about how to prepare for future pandemics? This program addresses the issue by traveling to viral hot spots around the world and interviewing high-ranking disease-prevention experts. Viewers learn about the basics of influenza microbiology, the factors that distinguish swine-origin H1N1 from a seasonal virus, its mechanisms for spreading,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Smallpox has officially been eradicated worldwide—but the destruction of lab cultures in government-sponsored biowar facilities was never monitored. A blend of dramatization and documentary, this program considers the weaponization and deployment of smallpox—or, by extension, any lethal virus—from preexisting stockpiles and by laboratory manufacture from mail order genetic material and online...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009