Description
During the past 100 years, life expectancy more than doubled in developed countries. In the last few decades, however, thirty new infectious diseases have emerged and one of them – AIDS – is becoming perhaps the most devastating epidemic in history. New diseases travel the globe with unprecedented rapidity, and older killers that once seemed controllable are roaring back with a vengeance. How Safe Are We? examines the most critical threats we face today – including avian flu – and the pressing need to strengthen global public health systems.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 3 reviews)

An Excellent Survey of Infectious Diseases

This is an excellent video and ideal for the classroom. It walks viewers through several case studies of modern and historical disease outbreaks. The story of bird flu is weaved throughout, although it can be difficult to keep track of the bird flu component as the individual case studies unfold. The video is composed of six separate segments dealing with different diseases:

Ebola - The video begins with a dramatization of the initial 1976 Ebola outbreak, including what appears to be a shot of the actual Ebola River.

AIDS - A case study of AIDS in Botswana. Viewers are introduced to a mother with AIDS and her infected children. It then traces Botswana's response to the crisis and discusses the problems of patient denial in the treatment of AIDS. Finally it shows the effectiveness of routine testing (i.e., making HIV tests part of routine medical screening) on AIDS detection and treatment.

Cholera - A dramatization of John Snow's cholera map that lead him to understand that the Broad Street pump was the cause of an 1850s London cholera epidemic.

SARS - An overview of the SARS outbreak and the success of the health community in preventing it from becoming a major epidemic.

1918 Flu - A comparison between the 1918 outbreak and the modern concerns of Bird Flu. It also provides and excellent example of forensic medicine as a doctor tracks down active viral particles in preserved tissue samples from the 1918 outbreak. Finally, it links this historical outbreak with avian influenza and discusses how viral mutations allow viruses to jump from one species to another.

Bird Flu - Tracks the initial outbreak of H5N1 virus, first in poultry then in humans. An interesting aspect of this is an effort to determine why 7 year old boys are particularly at risk from the disease; it turns out that plucking chickens is the job of young children and exposes them to greater risk of infection. Warns viewers that bird flu could easily become a pandemic and may have ~50% mortality rate. Ends with a discussion of the efforts to develop an H5N1 vaccine.

August 06, 2007

Loved the first Rx for Survival - This one did not meet the standard

The Rx for Survival series is a great collection of documentary stories on the current (and future) challenges to our world health. This edition, specifically marketed as "Bird Flu", reused too much of the previously aired material and tried to adapt it to a pandemic influenza scenario. In the end, this movie left me with the feeling that the makers were trying to capitalize on current pandemic fears, while minimizing the amount of new material required by reusing old `Rx for Survival' footage. The story was less focused and the non-pandemic influenza materials made the writer's lessons harder to find in the clutter.
January 06, 2007

Highly recommended for its educational grasp of the disturbing phenomena

Bird Flu: How Safe Are We? (A Global Health Challenge: Conquering AIDS, Avian Flu, And Other Deadly Epidemics) is narrated by Brad Pitt and provides viewers with up-to-date investigative reporting of the complexities and realities of public health systems and globally diverse and effective diseases including the newest threat to the global health environment -- "bird flu". This 56 minute DVD production offers an informative survey of modern discoveries with respect to health issues related to bird flue, and offers downloadable materials of educators, closed captions, video descriptions of the visually impaired, direct information from dispatches from health experts in the field, and activities for further explorations of global health issues. A part of the "RX for Survival" DVD series, Bird Flu is very highly recommended for its educational grasp of the disturbing phenomena of wide-spread communicable disease and issues global public health protection.

July 07, 2006

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