Pandemic - a horizon guide.

Virologist Mike Leahy presents this documentary looking at the history of pandemics from smallpox to SARS as captured on camera in previous Horizon documentaries. There is much archival footage showing diseases such as poliomyelitis, cholera and malaria and medical attempts to suppress their spread. In the late 1960s the World Health Organisation sought to eradicate malaria from the globe by destroying the mosquito population, when this failed the quest was on to find an effective vaccine or at least a treatment for the disease. The 1980s saw the onset of HIV and AIDS, brought to UK public attention in a Horizon documentary revisited here. The 1979 successful plan to eradicate smallpox from the world is also revisited, at the time thought to be a public health miracle as it was the first disease ever to be completely eradicated. The SARS pandemic and its rapid eratication are covered in this programme, meaning that only 800 people died from it in total.