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The Film


Share - Healing by Sharing
(Working Titel)
 Exposé for a Film Essay, HDCAM, 90 minutes
by Carsten Cierocki & Michael Stock
The basic story is about the family of 12-year-old Elyas who is living in Zambia. The family struggles for surviving with HIV. Daily routine is marked by the lack of all those things necessary for life that we take for granted.
People from different organizations such as Doctors without borders, Medico International, ACHAP (African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership) and the HIV-project Mother2Mother are dealing with the question how to satisfy the needs for the disadvantaged in the Third World Countries in order to improve their situation. To be able to provide practical help, they even pass legal trade laws prescribed by the industrial nations.

Three of the four in the film crew, who travel to Zambia, are themselves HIV positive. In a small road movie in addition to the travelogues and country descriptions, the personal approach of the film crew to the situation of people in third world countries will be documented. They give by their own dismay the audience a personal impression of the necessity of medical care, which is entitled to each according to the human rights.
It is unfair, complains Elyas, very unfair that he was not restored in the next class again. Since the age of seven Elyas was always sick, when at the end of the school year, the class works were written. He is HIV positive and lives with his grandmother Cathrin in a village in Zambia. Instead of enjoying a quiet retirement, she must work and take care about many children. A huge number of children: so many that you could think, it is an elementary school. Most of the children are HIV orphans. "It's exhausting and difficult - it only works when I give them the little that I get," said Beauty, "even if it is not very good food - as long as it helps them survive." She is the only adult daughter of Cathrin, also HIV positive, and helps her mother with the many children.

Every year, millions of people die from diseases that would normally be treated easily. In particular, the global south is suffering from a chronic lack of resources and structures to realize the human right to health. A third of the world's population lacks access to essential medicines. They die also because pharmaceutical patents provide de facto monopolies that own essential drug which are prohibitively expensive or are even not developed.

As filmmaker, I, Michael Stock, together with Thomas Blum, cameraman and car mechanic, with whom I already traveled from Berlin to Central Africa with a truck overland years ago, Fabian Michailova, sound engineer and Carsten Cierocki, Naturopaths and nurse, who is since many years dealing with "sharing as a principle of new world economy" as a necessary evolutionary leap in different working groups, want to make a trip to Africa in winter 2012. The plan is a multi-month trip from Kenya to Tanzania via Zambia.

After I, Michael Stock, spent many years in my last film, "Postcard To Daddy" to deal with sexual abuse by my father, I asked myself after the completion and evaluation of the film, of the further meaning of my life: What am I am beyond the "abused son”?

In January 2011, I met Carsten, who has never lost his optimism. He is a nurse. Words like: "Without sharing no justice! Without justice, no peace! Without peace, no future!" written on his poster, when if he goes to protests, but that was not enough for him. An equitable distribution of resources with a focus on (HIV) drugs / generics is and a personally motivated search of documenting ways of "healing through sharing" in the form of a cinematically essay.
India is also known as the "pharmacy of the poor." Sun affordable generics from India in the past played a major role in expanding the treatment of HIV / AIDS to over five million people. More than 80 percent of the drugs, for example, "Doctors without Borders" uses for the treatment of hundreds of thousands of AIDS patients are from India. "But the EU is pushing to integrate the protection of intellectual property rights protection in the investment chapters in trade agreements. This would enable European pharmaceutical companies to sue the Indian government when they see their profits threatened by political decisions or investments. For this reason, "Doctors without borders" initiated in 1999 a major campaign to life. The goal is to develop global solutions to better care for all people with drugs and bring the maintainers of research, economics and politics at a table, "says Oliver Moldenhauer, director of the Campaign" Europe - hands off our medicines" from doctors without borders (MSF).

Mothers play a significant role in the transmission of the HIV virus. According to UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Program on HIV / AIDS) a priority in curbing the AIDS pandemic should be preventing the transmission of the virus from mothers to their children.
The HIV project mothers2mothers (m2m) took up this task, which is prescribed in several African countries - and it serves the UN Millennium goal of improving health in developing countries, and the social situation of mothers and children.

In summer of 2011 Beauty reads an advertisement, encouraging HIV-positive mothers to apply for a position at "mothers2mothers" at the clinic in Muzoka, a city almost 140 kilometers away from her village, in the southern province of Zambia. Beauty has now submitted their application and was promptly set as Muzoka Clinic Site Coordinator. "This opportunity is God's answer to my prayers," said Beauty. "I'm very excited. I will no longer be with my family but it gives me hands-on training on HIV / AIDS and of mother-to-child transmission so I can even help mothers in my village to give babies HIV-negative birth and a healthy raise."
Although Elyas is so ill that his chances of surviving seem absurdly low, and because most urgent action is needed, Cathrin decides to ask Dr. Petiri for help. He has succeeded against all probability, to be twelve years old. The South African doctor Phenyo Petiri from MSF revealed to grandmother Cathrin that there is a new drug. So one can do something about the disease. This medicine comes from India...

The perspective to break through the current vicious circle of poverty and disease is no illusion. With just $ 40 a year a person can be provided with a "minimum package" for preventive and curative health services. Equipped with a 50 billion dollar “Global Health Fund” it would be sufficient to meet the urgent health needs of all people.
AIDS must not remain a fate as shown by the development in Botswana. Ten years ago it occupied a second place behind South Africa of the countries being most affected by AIDS. But there was a strong political will to change this situation. This was crucial for the establishment of ACHAP - African Comprehensive HIV / AIDS Partnerships in Botswana. This public-private partnership, founded by the MSD Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation together with the Botswana government aimed to curb the rampant AIDS epidemic with devastating social consequences. "Thus a unique model project, as the World Health Organization says, ACHAP, was created, and one of the largest in the public sector of developing countries in general.

Even the life of beauty has improved tremendously since she joined in m2m Muzoka. Beauty is empowered by her training and employment. This in turn allows other moms to get information about how a mother-to-child transmission is best avoided, so that their children remain HIV negative. In addition, Beauty´s own health has improved enormously. Despite the many HIV-positive people, Beauty always meets the challenges as a site coordinator at m2m. However, the biggest challenge at the moment is to encourage her customers to safe sex practices if their spouses refuse to use condoms. 

Skillfully Beauty consists to ensure that the spouses accompany their wives to antenatal clinics and strive to create positive living conditions and respect. "I am pleased to use the knowledge I have gained during training to improve the health of my family," says Beauty. The monthly salary she earns as a site coordinator helps to buy nutritious food and medicine for her family.
Personally I have always regretted not to be trained for a profession, which enables me to directly help people in need. My own HIV disease and the privilege of medical care at a high level showed me that not only can I survive with HIV, but by now I am able to motivate people to "healing by sharing" as a filmmaker.

         
 
     
 
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