Summary: Swimming, bathing, washing clothes, and fishing-these are everyday activities that put people in the developing world at risk of catching bilharzia (or schistosomiasis), if the water is infected with eggs of the schistosome worm. Left untreated, the disease can eventually block internal organs such as the liver and intestine, often leading to death. Children are especially at risk, with even a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Kala-azar, the common name for visceral leishmaniasis, is characterized by irregular bouts of fever, substantial weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver, and anemia. If left untreated it is almost certainly fatal. This program was filmed in the Indian state of Bihar, where 90 percent of the country's kala-azar cases are located. Forty per cent of these cases are now resistant to the drugs...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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: 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: 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: 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: This year alone, eight million people will become infected with tuberculosis. Like the common cold, TB spreads through the air when sufferers cough, sneeze, spit, or just talk. One needs only to inhale a few germs to catch it. This program tracks the disease, its impact, and the science behind it, from the U.K. to India to Malawi. At the Imperial College in London, Professor Douglas Young is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Virtually every child in the world, rich or poor, is infected early in life by a vicious bug called rotavirus. The lucky ones show no symptoms-they simply become immune. Others develop severe diarrhea. Given the best medicine, the victims recover. However, in developing countries, where even simple rehydration therapy may be hard to come by, rotavirus is lethal, killing around 400,000 children...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011