At different ends of the Earth, albendazole donations by GSK are making a huge difference to young kids and their families.

This film was produced as part of a suite of material gathered on two trips to India and Zanzibar for use as an advocacy tool to support GSK’s donation programme.

Having the children tell us their stories meant we needed to find confident speakers – no easy task in Zanzibar where traditionally young girls can be cripplingly shy. So we used a local fixing company to meet potential contributors, source the best stories and start to weave together a narrative that speaks to the heart, and the parent, in all of us.

Back in the UK we translated interviews, re-scripted and looked to use voiceover artists from the local African and Indian diaspora of London to help tell the story of how albendazole donations by GSK are positively impacting lives across the world. This helped keep the child’s voice at the centre of the narrative whilst avoiding the use of subtitles which can distract from the core action.

Staying the course is what it has taken to see River Blindness, a remote neglected tropical disease carried by the bites of black flies, slowly becoming a disease of the past.

In 1987, Merck committed to donate Mectizan – as much as needed, for as long as needed – with the goal to help eliminate river blindness. To celebrate the Mectizan Donation Program‘s 35th anniversary we went through our archives of footage, some filmed by us, some by scientists many years ago, and worked with a South African graphics artist to tell the story of 35 years of progress towards eliminating one of the most robust diseases known to mankind.

With a bespoke composed soundtrack and in-house voice-over, we managed condense 35 years into a powerful 3 and a half minutes!

The film was shown at the annual Mectizan Expert Committee meeting in Malawi in 2022, and since was sent out by MSD CEO Rob Davis to all their staff.

Humanity has eradicated one dangerous disease: smallpox. Under the right circumstances, we are on the path to achieve elimination or eradication of four others.

We were commissioned to create a series of films aimed at increasing awareness and accelerating progress towards disease elimination, particularly around neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) such as polio, lymphatic filariasis, river blindness & malaria.

By focusing on the key lessons from the successful smallpox and ongoing polio eradication campaigns, and hearing from the people at a global and national level, our films in GLIDE’s ‘Eliminating Diseases’ video series sought to  raise the profile of NTDs amongst stakeholders, funders and governmental organisations.

We’re proud to share that our film generated over 1,000 views on GLIDE’s YouTube channel, and over 150,000 combined video plays on their social media channels. In addition, page visits to the organisation’s website rose by 161%, along with a 187% increase in new users, with the most notable increase seen in visitors from target country, Cameroon, which saw a 100% rise.

As a crowning achievement, we along with Gong Communications were nominated as finalists in the 2023 Sabre Awards in the Central African category for work in raising awareness through GLIDE’s Webisodes Campaign.