Epidemics: The Invisible Threat

A Christian relief organization is met with the challenge of fighting the Ebola epidemic in west Africa, through this enormous challenge their faith grew.

FRONTLINE spent months on the ground in West Africa, tracing the Ebola outbreak’s path through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in 2014 and 2015 and uncovering the hidden story of what happened before the world started paying attention. The documentary shared firsthand accounts from survivors and victims’ family members — from the forest region of Guinea to the bustling Liberian capital of Monrovia — including the father of a one-year-old Guinean child who was believed to be the first person to die in the outbreak.

More and more bacteria are becoming insensitive to antibiotics, not least due to excessive drug consumption. According to the EU, this problem could soon become as explosive as the environmental issue - and antibiotic resistance threatens to become one of the main causes of death worldwide. Research must therefore find alternatives - not miracle cures, but permanently effective drugs. There has already been one in the past: One hundred years ago, the French biologist Félix d'Hérelle discovered mysterious "bacteria-eating" viruses, known as bacteriophages or phages for short. He used these to successfully treat bacterial infections before the development of antibiotics, but his method was forgotten again. Is bacteriophage therapy the miracle medicine of the future?

As the WHO warns the coronavirus is reaching a dangerous tipping point, watch the most up to date and comprehensive account of the extraordinary chain of events that have left the world on the edge of a pandemic.

In a Documentary Special, Matt Frei speaks to leading healthcare experts, asking how the NHS will cope with coronavirus, and if we should be acting quicker to stop things spiralling out of control.

With the world increase in spillover diseases from animals Scientists trace outbreaks such as the Zika and Ebola viruses which have the potential to infect humans.

Follow Dr. Todd Phillips though the Ebola - stricken jungles of Liberia as he and his team struggle to bring the Gospel and clean water to an entire nation - border to border - for the first time in history.

Even today there is still a certain resistance to recognizing the aesthetic revolution caused by Virus in the early eighties. The audacity of Federico Moura at the head of the La Plata's band exceeded the limits of rock and is still a source of art-pop knowledge. Imágenes Paganas explores that tension and rejection in times of dictatorship, a scourge that the Moura family paid with the disappearance of Federico's older brother. The documentary by Costantino inaugurates a time of historical reparation with Federico Moura as a warrior of modernity.

As the latest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus continues to spread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this remarkable film reveals the full horror of a full-scale Ebola epidemic - that which hit Sierra Leone in 2014. By the time it was brought under control, eighteen months later, more than 3,500 were dead and thousands more infected. The film begins as Ebola arrives in one of Sierra Leone’s main towns, Makeni, home to a local film-maker Tyson Conteh. Tyson and his film crew risked their lives to record at close quarters the tragedy unfolding around them. Sadly, not all of the film-makers survived. But what they recorded over months of filming isn’t just recent history - “Standing Among the Living” provides a grim warning for the future.

From as far back as the black plague all the way to the latest Ebola scare we are always a step behind when it comes to our battle against pandemics. The common though of "it needs to break out before we come up with our defense" is being debated. Why not preventive? This documentary delves into the dark scenarios in which not only biological threats but also technological ones like computer viruses could spell the end of humanity as we know it.

Beijing, China, 2020. Empty streets, mandatory masks, checkpoints, the entire state apparatus used to impose severe restrictions on population movements. An entire country quarantined to fight a fierce epidemic…

Survivors presents an intimate portrait of Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the sociopolitical turmoil that lies in its wake.

Once a renowned conductor and musician, Clive was struck down in 1985 by a virus that caused massive damage to his brain. Against the odds, doctors managed to save his life but he was left with a memory that spans just a few seconds.

Ben Steele’s ORPHANS OF EBOLA follows Abu, a 12-year-old boy from a Sierra Leone village, who loses eight members of his family and must restart his life elsewhere. Filmed over a period of four months, beginning just after the height of the epidemic in Dec. 2014 through the reopening of the country’s schools in April 2015, Abu’s story illustrates the incredible bravery of the thousands of children who have been orphaned by Ebola as they reconcile with the past and forge new lives.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa seen through the eyes of the local populations, village officials, aid workers, the sick and those who recovered.

Syndrome K is the true story about a highly contagious, highly fictitious disease created by three Roman Catholic doctors during the holocaust to hide Jews in a Vatican-affiliated hospital.

How has cinema changed with the experience of the pandemic experienced by the whole planet? The camera is no longer a "screen" to hide behind but a weapon to fight with.

Body Team 12 is tasked with collecting the dead at the height of the Ebola outbreak. These body collectors have arguably the most dangerous and gruesome job in the world. Yet despite the strain they emerge as heroes while the film explores their philosophy and strength.

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