Just as the rivers of the Andes mountains twist and coil in a curious maze, so does the grave situation of Peruvian women's health care. Within the past decade, the Andean women in Peru have faced a massive sterilization campaign, exorbitant fines for homebirths, remnants of a deadly civil war, and the second highest maternal death rate in South America. Yet, as they have for centuries, the Quechua and Aymara people are fighting to preserve their...

The Raising of America Series is a five-part documentary series that explores the question: Why are so many children in America faring so poorly? What are the consequences for the nation’s future? How might we, as a nation, do better? The series investigates these questions through different lenses: What does science tell us about the enduring importance of early life experiences on the brain and body? What it is like to be a parent today? And what...

A staff of doctors at a V.A. hospital do whatever it takes to provide the necessary medical care for ailing U.S. veterans.

Bosnia. Rwanda. Kosovo. Sierra Leone. Pakistan. Just a few of the world’s humanitarian and political crises in the past years. Whether the result of war or nature, these disasters devastate populations and cripple health systems. Despite the immense dangers and difficulties of the work, one organization, Doctors Without Borders, has continuously intervened at these frontlines of overwhelming human need. Set in war-torn Congo and Liberia, Living...

When George C. Stoney was a boy delivering newspapers, he was curious about the black women with black satchels he would spot occasionally on the streets of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, before dawn. Later he learned these early risers were midwives. This is a training film about midwifery which transcends the form. It was selected by the Library of Congress for placement on the National Film Registry in 2002 as "a culturally, historically and artistically...

Unnatural causes sounds the alarm about the extent of our glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect. While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, Unnatural causes crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy or sick. This...

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering...

Crossing the Line follows two young medical students from the University of Tasmania, Amy and Paul, as they leave their safe middle class environments for an eight week placement in the remote indigenous communities on Mornington Island. Here, for the first time, they confront the realities of indigenous health care. As they move beyond their professional roles at times, there is an ongoing tension between their personal experience and the professional...

"Georges and Anne are a couple of retired music teachers enjoying life in their eighties. However, Anne suddenly has a stroke at breakfast and their lives are never the same. That incident begins Anne's harrowingly steep physical and mental decline as Georges attempts to care for her at home as she wishes"--IMDb.