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Nova: Ebola the Plague Fighters [VHS] | VHS Tape

Starring: Nova

List Price:

$19.95

Binding:

VHS Tape

Rating:

Run Time:

60 minutes

Format:

Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC

Studio:

Wgbh Boston

Number of Discs:

Release Date:

March 28, 2000

Sales Rank:

23,614rd

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Description
The Ebola virus and its devastating impact is profiled as you travel behind the quarantine line with NOVA and the scientists battling to contain this most deadly of viruses. Winner of GOLD PLAQUE 1997 Chicago International Television Festival.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 5 reviews)

Not quite grassroots, but definitely close up by Shi-Hsia Hwa (Madison, WI, USA)

5 Stars
November 06, 2007
As other reviewers have said, it's really amazing how diligent the crew were in following the doctors, nurses, medical students, and other researchers, trying to capture as much of their activities as possible. The fact that the Zairean doctors permitted the film crew to record them in a private meeting, making a decision that they knew the international doctors would likely disagree with, is a testimony to their trust in the film crew. Which brings me to another strength of this documentary - showing the outbreak from several different points of view, not just that of the white foreign scientists. The dedication and professionalism of the clinicians and nurses doing the hazardous, difficult work of tending to patients gets center stage, as do the efforts of healthcare workers and medical students going door-to-door and preaching in the markets to alert the local people. Even when the young students fumble, it's clear that they're trying their best to make the right decisions. The real-life climax comes when one of their own - a nurse - contracts Ebola and the doctors have to make the decision alluded to above, which may or may not save her life. How they make the call is an illustration not only of biomedical ethics, but also cultural differences. A couple of books I'd recommend to complement this movie are "Level 4: Virus Hunters of the CDC" (Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch) and "Virus Hunter" (CJ Peters). The books cover some of the same events and the authors cross paths at those points. McCormick has had much more experience actually living and working in Africa, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and later with the WHO, also joined later by his wife Fisher-Hoch. Peters, if I remember correctly, was there much more briefly and comes across as a bit of a "rock star". It's interesting to compare how this influences their opinions on how dangerous Ebola is, especially if you have some background as a worker in medicine or biomedical sciences yourself. I do NOT recommend Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" if you want to get a good picture of Ebola - you'll just scare yourself. While the bare facts as described in the book may be accurate, the style of writing is just sensationalist and should be taken rather as entertainment, like a horror novel.

About A Virus With No Cure And No Treatment by G. Reid (Roseland, NJ)

5 Stars
January 06, 2005
The video about the Ebola Virus is well done. The Ebola Virus kills a high percentage of its victims (77% in the 1995 outbreak). Fortunately, the outbreak was confined to a remote region of Zaire in May 1995. Learn how disease specialists traced the origins of the outbreak to one person by compiling a complete chain of everyone killed by the virus.

scary by Kool guy (Santa cruz CA)

5 Stars
October 29, 2004
As a seventh grade student I thought this was an incredible film, however this movie was very graphic and probably not intended for chilrens. I was disgusted at how my 7th grade science teacher showed us this. I give it five stars because while it might have been to much for a kid my age to handle, it was still a very good movie.

Puts You in the Hot Zone! by Stephan Bullard (Hartford, CT USA)

5 Stars
February 17, 2002
I don't believe I can heap enough praise on this video. This is truly an incredible piece of film. I teach comparative physiology at a medium-sized university and purchased this video to show as part of my immunology section. I was expecting a documentary-like video covering the history of Ebola with a few graphic scenes of the 1995 Kikwit outbreak. Instead, I was incredibly surprised and excited to discover that almost all of the film comes directly from Kikwit and was shot during the actual outbreak (i.e., when no one knew how large an outbreak it would become, and when the cameramen themselves were in grave danger). The video follows the efforts of international and Zairian doctors as they work to contain the outbreak. Unlike many similar videos, however, Ebola, The Plague Fighters does not gloss over the social aspects of the epidemic. Rather, the video also documents the upheaval and fear that Ebola causes in the Kikwit community. One particularly human scene involves student doctors who discover the body of a victim, realize they have to do something immediately to protect the community, yet have to deal with the situation even though they lack the proper equipment to safely approach the body. Overall this video provides a unique perspective into modern disease fighting. Literally every scene seems to be more interesting and compelling than the last. Some scenes are graphic, so it is probably not appropriate for young audiences. However, assuming students are warned in advance, I believe that this would be an excellent video to show high school and college students. It is also a must for anyone interested in emerging viruses and epidemiology.

The real story of "Outbreak" by Carrie (Kansas, United States)

5 Stars
June 22, 2000
This video is very compelling! I show it each year in my general biology classes (10th graders)and every year several of the students want to discuss the material outside of class. It not only has a lot of good information about the ebola virus itself and how it affects the body, physically, but it also shows the emotional strain put on the victim's families, as well as the thoughts of the doctors working with the patients. I usually show the movie "Outbreak" after viewing this video so the students can see the correlation, and we follow up with a discussion of biological warfare. There are some scenes which are rather grotesque and students who have weak stomachs are warned ahead of time, but the information presented in this video is so powerful that it is one of the students, and my, favorites. To see just how damaging a virus, which is thousands of times smaller than a bacteria, can be to an individual, a region, and a country is stunning, and scary!

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Outbreak (Snap Case)
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Cuba Gooding Jr.
Directed By: Wolfgang Petersen
Also With: Anne Kopelson (Producer), Arnold Kopelson (Producer), Duncan Henderson (Producer), Gail Katz (Producer), Nana Greenwald (Producer), Laurence Dworet (Writer), Robert Roy Pool (Writer)

Catch the fever of "one of the great scare stories of our time" (Roger Ebert) as Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman race to save life on earth when an unstoppable killer virus hits our shores.

The Demon in the Freezer
by Richard Preston (Author)

“The bard of biological weapons captures
the drama of the front lines.”
-Richard Danzig, former secretary of the navy

The first major bioterror event in the United States-the anthrax attacks in October 2001-was a clarion call for scientists who work with “hot” agents to find ways of protecting civilian populations against biological weapons. In The Demon in the Freezer, his first nonfiction book since The Hot Zone, a #1 New York Times bestseller, Richard Preston takes...