Description
It is estimated that every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria.
Medicines continue to be the main tool in fighting it—but, with growing resistance to existing drugs, there is an urgent need to discover new ones and distribute them at affordable prices in poor, disease-endemic countries. The major obstacle to the discovery of new anti-malarials is the lack of global investment in drug research and development. The enormous costs and time resources needed for R&D — with little or sometimes no prospect of return upon investment once a drug is fully registered and on the market—are usually dissuasive to the large pharmaceutical companies.
But there are exceptions. Filmed in Tanzania, Zanzibar, and India, this program tracks the development of a new low-cost drug that could save millions of lives.
This film is part of the KILL OR CURE series of 57 x 25-minute documentaries produced for the BBC. These films can be bought individually or as a series.