‘The way I was feeling in May, it was like I was already dead’: The Lazarus Effect
This remarkable half hour film documents a modern phenomenon called the Lazarus Effect.The film’s title comes from the biblical figure of Lazarus, who was brought back to life by Jesus after four days dead.
In reality, a similar type of miracle is happening all over the world, in the form of antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV/AIDS.
This video, produced in collaboration with the (Red) campaign provides us with an insight into living with HIV in the developing world. It shows people of all ages at very serious stages of their illness, all whom are able to make a rapid recovery. The incredible part is that it shows you exactly how far along you can progress with the disease and still almost do a U-turn after taking ARVs. With these drugs, less and less people are deemed a lost cause.
The drugs work, so why is that people are still dying? In other words, what are the complicating issues? Money is one. More free ARVs are becoming available, but in places where the drugs are not free, it is often a choice between buying the medicine or feeding your family.
Social stigma is another problem. Where the subject is not spoken about openly, people with HIV receive no support in the community. Alone and afraid, sometimes it feels better to pretend it is not happening at all.
General lack of information about HIV and ARVs means that many people do not get tested at all. I’ll confess that until I did a bit of research (readily available on the internet), I didn’t really know much about antiretrovirals. How long does it take before you feel better? Are there any circumstances in which they don’t work? Do they work in preventing mother to child transmission during pregnancy?
With all these questions, and no official information its would be easy to make incorrect assumptions which might result in not taking the drugs on time, or not getting tested at all. To those who don’t know about ARVs, having HIV equates to a death sentence.
Work is being done to overcome these obstacles. The video features a woman named Constance Mudenda, who works tirelessly in Zambia to create a network of support for HIV sufferers. Having lost all three of her children to the disease, she no longer wants people to have to endure that kind of grief.
Initiatives such as Constance’s support group, help to eradicate the social alienation of being HIV positive. All the peer educators in her clinic are HIV positive, so they can speak from experience, gain the patient’s trust and talk openly about the disease.
People can turn their future around once they start taking ARVs, but this does not happen without the right environment. People need accurate information, support, and a forum to communicate with others. If the information is there but no one is receiving it, then it may as well not exist.
The Lazarus Effect is truly a miracle of science, and thankfully more people are living longer with HIV. However, there is always the human aspect to consider. Aid programs that distribute antiretroviral drugs must also factor in the importance of creating an enabling environment, in order to effect the change they want.
With the upcoming replenishment of the Global Fund, there's an opportunity for all of us to contribute to making sure that we have the funds to scale up the fight against Malaria. That's why we've teamed up with our partners at RESULTS UK, and are giving people the in the UK the chance to write to your local MP about the Global Fund. If you're in another country, you can use the same information as the base to contact your local politicians to ask them to ensure that your government does their bit too.
If you’re reading this there is a good chance you have seen our 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation, and you will be a little familiar with the west African country of Ghana - a vibrant country with a growing economy and a emerging democracy and certainly one of Africa’s most dynamic nations.
It should continue to progress, but like many of its neighbours, Ghana is still plagued by endemic diseases like malaria. According to the World Health Organisation, malaria kills around a million people each year, and reduces a country's GDP by as much as 1.3% because of people being sick.
We know that Malaria can be largely prevented by widespread use of mosquito nets, and efforts to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds - stagnant pools of water. In Malaria endemic areas, you can think of a bednet likea toothbrush; an essential piece of health equipment.
This video shows how Malaria No More UK, working with Nets For Life, are working to ensure that communities in Ghana can have access to bednets. They recognise that delivery alone is not enough to get people to use nets, so they are training up local people to speak about why it is so important to use the nets, and use them properly.
Unfortunately, Malaria isn’t just about people dying. Even if a child recovers from Malaria the chances are, they’ve missed a fair bit of school. If when they do return they are put in a lower grade, they may feel embarrassed and drop out all together. This is surprisingly common problem.
Or, for adults, a week off work after a malaria induced fever means a weeks less income to look after your family. That's less money to put into kids education, savings for the future, or less money to get the essentials of food and clean water.
The good news is that thanks to efforts like those of Malaria no more, we're seeing a significant decline in the disease in many parts of the world. The Roll Back Malaria Partnership - the global coordinating mechanism in the fight against Malaria - has calculated that 25 countries - including Eritrea, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe - halved Malaria cases an cases and deaths between 2000 and 2007.
With the upcoming replenishment of the Global Fund, there's an opportunity for all of us to contribute to making sure that we have the funds to scale up the fight against Malaria. That's why we've teamed up with our partners at RESULTS UK, and are giving people the in the UK the chance to write to your local MP about the Global Fund. If you're in another country, you can use the same information as the base to contact your local politicians to ask them to ensure that your government does their bit too.
When I was first heard of the Global Fund, I thought it sounds a bit like the World Bank? Surely just another way to manage international debt and distribute money to governments. That was my first assumption. My second was, why do we need another bank for the world, surely its just going to make things more complicated?
Wrong on both counts.
The Global Fund, founded in 2002, is actually something very different form the World Bank. Its much simpler, as you can see from this video. It is an organisation dedicated solely to fighting HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. So it is integral for the achievement of the sixth millennium development goal.
It was former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s dream to create an institution like the Global Fund. His analogy is that as humans we are all in the same boat when it comes to global disease. If one end of the boat gets a hole in it, we’re all at risk. How big that boat is depends on your perspective, but I don’t think its big enough to pretend we can’t see it at all.
So why are we writing about the Global fund? Well, because its working incredibly well. Michael Kazatchkine is the executive Director of the Global Fund, and testifies to its success. In 2001 hardly anyone in developing countries were being treated for AIDS, today it is over 4 million people.
Two thirds of all international funding to fight Tuberculosis and Malaria is now being channelled through the Global Fund, because it has been recognised for its effectiveness.
It is effective because of its flexibility. It does not naively believe that there is one model to deliver treatment worldwide. Programs need to be at the very least, country specific, and this requires the input of local people because they are the ones who really know what will work in their community.
Furthermore, it frames HIV, TB and Malaria as epidemics, and you cannot fight an epidemic alone; a vast network of people is needed. It is perhaps the global scale that might make the challenge seem overwhelming, but when you think about it, nearly everything is global these days. There should really be no problem in forming a worldwide commitment to fight something that will potentially harm us all.
Michael Kazatchkine asserts that the post Global Fund picture is radically different to the era before it was founded. The statistics demonstrate the how many more people are receiving treatment, but what is astounding is the lack of awareness of this achievement. The majority of people that I speak to about poverty issues seem to think things are at a standstill, when they most definitely are not. The Global Fund is just one institution channelling money to fight three diseases, there are so many more doing equally great work.
Right now, the world's biggest donors - governments, private foundations and large organisations - are considering how much money the Global Fund will have for the next three years to fight these diseases. Although the Global Fund has achieved some huge successes in the last few years, pressures on budgets around the world mean that there's real concern that the Global Fund won't be given enough money to really scale up its work, and continue to step up the fight against these diseases.
That's why we've teamed up with our partners at RESULTS UK, and are giving people the in the UK the chance to write to your local MP about the Global Fund. If you're in another country, you can use the same information as the base to contact your local politicians to ask them to ensure that your government does their bit too.
Child Mortality is not a controversial subject. We do not want to see children dying from curable diseases or starvation. We want to know how the deaths can be prevented, but before we pledge our support, we also need some evidence of the work being done with our money.
Save the Children’s ‘See where the Good Goes’ campaign aims to do exactly this. It focuses on supporting local health workers, who make a phenomenal difference in ensuring less children suffer from conditions easily treated. One of the central problems regarding healthcare in developing countries is distance. In the rural areas of any country it is likely that the nearest medical centre is a bit of a drive. So what do you do if you don’t have a car? Get a bus? What if there is no bus either because the road is unsafe to drive on, or because there is no transport system? Often walking is the only way.
This video shows us Mahmuda Akhter, a health worker in Bangladesh, on her way to see a patient. She walks many miles to see and treat children. With haunting background music, lush scenery and her beautiful traditional dress, Mahmuda could be used as a clip for a tourism advertisement for Bangladesh. Hence the invitation to compare her to a catwalk model.
It is refreshing to see a video like this. Many other campaign videos, particularly ones that focus on child mortality try to invoke our sympathy by pushing emotional buttons. Effective in recruiting donors, and truthful though they might be, ultimately we only left with a sense of the horror. Of course, there are two sides to every story. Whilst there is no sense in pretending everything is idyllic as tourism often does, likewise not all aid projects resemble a horror story.
Where the Good Goes is a success story.Due to basic care provided by health workers, a child is saved every 4 seconds. For all the negative statistics, there are hopeful ones too. More support is needed of course, more health workers have to be trained, but it is happening. Its just one of the many smaller easy solutions contributing to the bigger goals.
We’ve previously advocated the work of the Gates Foundation, because like us they are committed to publicising aid projects that are really working. Here is a video from their Living Proof Project, demonstrating a very simple solution to the problem of child mortality.
Child mortality, the focus of the fourth millennium development goal is often directly linked to maternal mortality. In cases where the mother receives no prenatal care during pregnancy, the chances of there being complications during birth are greatly increased, putting mother and baby at risk of death.
This video shows us the story of Grace Ngoto, a new mother living in Malawi. Contrary to perceptions about high birth rates in developing countries, it took Grace nine years to get pregnant. You can imagine her despair, after finally conceiving and spending many months preparing to become a parent, to then discover that there are complications in the pregnancy and the baby must be delivered prematurely.
Premature babies are highly susceptible to infection, and need a good deal of heat, food and love to gain strength. With incubators readily available in the UK, and a high survival rate for mothers, premature babies here have a good chance of living a normal, healthy life. In developing countries like Malawi the technology is so often not available, and as much as it would be great to raise enough funds to better equip hospitals, there are alternative solutions which are far less costly.
Grace has high blood pressure, which forced doctors to deliver her baby early. At just 1.8 pounds, her child would have been in grave danger if it wasn’t for a revolutionary program called Kangaroo Mothercare. Endorsed by the World Health Organisation and funded by by Save the Children and USAID, Kangaroo Mothercare is now saving lives in many countries across Africa
The principle is very simple- we can protect newborns by using the human body as natural incubator. Babies are strapped to their mothers chests, and essentially become trapped in a warm cosy pouch close to their food source. Just like a kangaroo. For Grace, this easy, natural method of caring for underweight newborns, has changed the course of her life. It is no surprise that she is now dedicated to communicating the Kangaroo Mothercare program to her community, to ensure that effective projects like are on everyone’s radar.
This video, produced in collaboration with the 
