SMU alumnus Mickey Grant’s new documentary, “Injection,” uncovers the African AIDS epidemic caused by the controlled dispersal of sterile medical materials and the unfair arrests of one Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses.
“Injection” begins with Grant’s trip to Nairobi, Kenya, where he witnesses the highly unsanitary conditions to which African people are subjected. Dirty needles and syringes that lay in open sewers are sought out by children and then sold cheaply to local, often bogus pharmacies. The pharmacies advertise that they sell medical supplies, offer counseling and perform circumcisions.
In one scene, the owner of one pharmacy admits the syringes are used 20 times or more without being washed, even when they come to the pharmacy out of their original packaging.
One African doctor in the film said there are about 16 billion different kinds of injections each year, and that 29 to 30 million Africans are infected with AIDS. He said that if there were more sanitary health practices in Africa, the amount of deaths and people afflicted with AIDS would be lowered by almost 30 percent.
One Nairobian journalist recounts his family’s story and how negligent injections affected his family. He explains that his parents are both HIV positive, and that his younger brother had not been born with the virus. Before a trip up the coast of Kenya, the entire family needed be vaccinated so as not to catch the malaria virus. The person vaccinating the family, two parents and six children, used the same needle on all eight family members, injecting the youngest son, who was previously HIV negative, with AIDS.
In a stunning scene of a World Health Organization conference in Kenya, a doctor for the W.H.O. provides evidence, which condones the use of needles and syringes multiple times. The doctor explains that using water to rinse the syringes after being used will not completely eliminate any traces of disease, but that eliminating the majority of the infection is okay – for Africa.
Grant and others attending the conference are flabbergasted that the W.H.O. would deliver such information and blame these practices, not unsafe sex practices, which is what this doctor and other African government officials say is the main cause for the spread of HIV.
In early 1997, children in a hospital in Benghazi, Libya started becoming sick with AIDS. In February 1998, five nurses from Bulgaria arrived at the hospital to help these ailing children. They were soon arrested, along with a Palestinian doctor. While the rest of the world was outraged at the unfair treatment these people were receiving, the Libyan people were celebrating the “capture” of the people infecting their children with AIDS. Grant says the military dictator of Libya, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Qadhafi, is responsible for the brainwashing of the Libyan people.
The six prisoners are still being held and recently had a death sentence overturned. The case will soon be tried before the Libyan Supreme Court.
This is Grant’s fifth film and will be shown at the Inwood Theater now through Feb. 2 at 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
