In the Shadow of Ebola, a short documentary on the Ebola crisis in Liberia, has now been released free online on PBS/Independent Lens.
In the Shadow of Ebola is an intimate story of a family and a nation torn apart by the Ebola outbreak. Caught in an invisible war that is painfully reminiscent of the chaos and confusion they lived through during a fourteen-year civil war, a family and a people find the compassion and inner resolve to combat the virus’s spread.
The film was co-produced and co-directed by UW-Madison professor and African Studies affiliate Gregg Mitman, who has spent a number of years working in Liberia on the history of a 1926 Harvard expedition, sponsored by Firestone, and the environmental and social consequences that followed in its wake. Mitman’s research offers an informed historical and cultural perspective on the Ebola crisis that has that has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and on public radio. In the Shadow of Ebola is ideally suited for classes in African history and global health, and is being used by the CDC this summer as part of its mandatory training program for incoming Epidemic Intelligence Service officers.