Why Every Mother Should Cry on World Malaria Day
Last week at the Carter Center in Atlanta, I attended a premiere for the new HBO film, Mary and Martha (which also runs on the cable network April 25 in honor of World Malaria Day). The room was filled with top scientific minds and malaria researchers, many of whom have helped establish Atlanta (home to the CDC and previously the U.S. Office of Malaria Control in War Areas) as ground zero for global health. These folks are keenly aware of the statistics about deadly parasitic illnesses (in 2013, 3.3 billion people are at risk for being infected with malaria; currently, 90 percent of deaths from malaria occur in Africa), yet as they watched actresses Hilary Swank and Brenda Blethyn portray two moms who struggle to overcome their grief after losing sons to malaria in Mary and Martha, the auditorium was reduced to a pile of Kleenex and sniffles...
I interviewed Richard Curtis about his new HBO film, Mary and Martha, and wrote about their discussion in the Huffington Post in honor of World Malaria Day 2013. The full interview can be found here.
Press photo courtesy of HBO.