The film focuses on key figures on the frontline of health care in Zambia: Dr. Peter Mwaba, the chief of medicine at the only teaching hospital in Zambia, who is responsible for training the new cadre of desperately needed doctors; Mwansa Kangwa, a young intern just beginning her training in the most challenging of environments; Judy Banda, an HIV+ community health worker who typifies the crucial role of non-physicians in health care in a land without enough doctors; Iris Mwanza, a Zambian who left her easy life in the United States as a corporate lawyer to help run the main provider of AIDS treatment; and Dr. Jeffrey Stringer, a United States doctor who has brought the best of management and information skills from the West, allowing Zambian providers to provide top-notch AIDS treatment. As the author of a landmark paper in the August 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Stringer and colleagues have been able to use nonphysician providers like Judy Banda to ensure the health care of Zambians.
The world needs 4.3 million more doctors, midwives and nurses to meet its health care needs, and the vast majority of this need is in poor countries. The Millennium Development Goals agreed to by 189 countries in the year 2000 included several admirable health targets, such as reducing child mortality by two thirds, but these goals will never be met if there are not enough health providers. These needs are most keenly felt in Africa, where an impoverished population with the highest burden of diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis has the fewest doctors- in some areas on the order of one physician for every 20,000 people. Unfortunately, this aspect of health care barely registers on the public radar. With money now becoming available for AIDS therapy and other diseases, it is the human resource crisis that is the real key to the puzzle of improving the lot of millions of men, women, and children. This is true not just for Africa, but anywhere where health care is restricted by a lack of qualified caregivers. Whatâs to be done? The first step is to increase awareness of the problem. The second step is to point to the directions for a solution. "Year 25+" seeks to put a human face on this problem. An active media campaign plans to disseminate the film through public television, as well as through medical schools, universities, and public health schools, where it can have the greatest impact on future health care providers.