Title: Surviving Birkitts
Fomatt: XD Cam
This summer I traveled to Malawi to film a documentary on a rare cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma which affects more than 200,000 children a year in Equatorial Africa.
The cause of this cancer (named after British doctor Denis Birkitt who first recognised this tumour based cancer some 50 years ago), is not known although the treatment success rate, if caught in its early stages, is high. The problem lies with its extremely aggressive nature which can double its size within 24hrs and can kill children within a few months.
This documentary will provide doctors, health workers, and medical students with a resource to further advance understanding, thus enabling earlier diagnosis and treatment in the West, and for Africa it will be used as a tool in schools, universities and hospitals to raise awareness of the need for aftercare. It will also be used to engage pharmaceutical companies to provide affordable drugs to hospitals firstly across Malawi and then in the longer term across Sub-Saharan Africa.
