LAGOS: Two years after Nigeria fended off what could have been a devastating
Ebola epidemic, the 12-week ordeal is playing out again — only this
time, on a movie screen.
The Nigerian docudrama "93 Days," which premiered in Lagos on
Tuesday, chronicles the harrowing weeks in the summer of 2014 when a man
ill with the Ebola virus arrived in the city from Liberia.
Ebola is transmitted by contact with infected bodily fluids, and
Lagos, a densely-populated city of 20 million where people shop in
packed markets and ride on overcrowded buses, presented an ideal
environment for the virus to spread.
Nigerian public health officials, along with bodies like the World
Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, sprang
into action and contained the virus within a few weeks. The country was
certified free of the virus that October.
Eight people died, but that number was just a fraction of the over
11,000 who would die overall, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone.
"93 Days" dramatizes the work of Nigerian and international health
workers who responded to the virus’s arrival in the city and prevented
its transmission.
“It’s a success story, it’s a story of how Nigerians came together to
fight this dreadful disease. And very rarely do we have this kind of
beautiful story being told about ourselves,” said producer Bolanle
Austen-Peters.
The movie was shot in the same neighborhoods and in some of the same
buildings where sick patients were treated. That gave it an unusual
level of realism.
“Some of the doctors were actually there and they were acting as
consultants on the movie,” said Sola Oyebade, an actor who plays an
angry diplomat. A bloody scene involving an infected patient and some
nurses had to be shot multiple times because the doctors said it wasn’t
true to real life.
“We shot that about 20 times. And the doctors kept saying, ‘no, that wasn’t how it was, this was how it was,’” Oyebade said.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest city and an international transportation
hub. Had Ebola spread in the city, the fear was that it could have
quickly moved to neighboring countries or beyond.
Director Steve Gukas said he hopes people who watch the movie
understand how closely people in far-flung parts of the world are
connected.
“We need to care more, we need to collaborate more, because the truth
is, the way Nigeria was able to defeat Ebola was through shared
collaboration. And it wasn’t just collaboration of Nigerians,” Gukas
said.
The film premiered earlier this month at the Toronto International
Film Festival, and will be released in Nigerian theaters on Friday.
Gukas said he also wants to distribute the film internationally.
http://www.voanews.com/a/nigeria-ebola-gets-nollywood-treatment/3510032.html
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