Amid global concerns about the swine flu epidemic, the RTÉ Television Archive Unit launches a new series. OUTBREAK tells the human stories behind disease outbreaks in Ireland over the last one hundred years. It also includes stories of harm traced to drug and other treatments. Over six themed programmes, OUTBREAK talks to survivors of ‘Spanish’ influenza, polio and tuberculosis. There are interviews with fathers who lost their daughters to measles, and those struggling with the legacy of Thalidomide.
The series begins with the Killer Flu of 1918—also known as the ‘Spanish’ or Black flu. Subsequent programmes trace the great epidemics of tuberculosis and polio which hit Ireland most during the 1940s and 1950s. The man-made tragedy of Thalidomide was born in the late 1950s. Measles, which is sometimes regarded as an innocuous childhood disease, can be a dormant killer. And finally, the modern plague of HIV/AIDS, which hit Ireland in the 1980’s, is recounted by those living productively with the virus.
PROGRAMME FIVE: Tuesday, 30th June 2009, RTÉ ONE at 20:30
MEASLES – THE DORMANT KILLER
For hundreds of years the Measles virus was viewed as a common childhood illness. In reality many young lives were lost each year to the disease. In the 1980s a vaccine was finally made available to children in Ireland, but for some it came too late. The programme tells the story of two fathers, Brendan Prendergast of Dublin and
Dumitru Pop from Romania, whose lives were changed forever by the disease.