The film shows that another world is possible: that human bodies are not isolated, pathologized, and stigmatized, but that an intimate living-in-common is realizable.

Emmanuel Urey and his family’s struggle is the subject of a gripping documentary production by Independent Lens which trails Urey, a Liberian going to school in Wisconsin but who was in Monrovia with some of his children when the Ebola virus broke out.  The film is both an intimate portrait of a family in the center of a terrifying crisis, but also a fascinating look at how a country in the aftermath of a long civil war handled a major health scare.

Gregg Mitman, a Professor of History of Science, Medical History, and Environmental Studies and member of the Global Health Institute Advisory, captures Urey’s personal experience in Liberia and Madison in the documentary, “In the Shadow of Ebola.” With the film, Mitman offers a sharp contrast to the crisis portrayed throughout most of the media coverage on Ebola.

With the international community sending doctors and resources to help stop Ebola's spread across West Africa, we turn to medical historian Gregg Mitman to help us understand the history behind how people there - and here - are responding to the outbreak.

He was in Liberia when the virus was first reported in the capital, Monrovia.