LOVE IN THE TIME OF ZIKA FINAL SCRIPT ( TUES MARCH 22) HEARTBEAT (C5 / 1.10.42) & MUSIC ADRIANNA: It’s really tough to see a problem that we cannot fix. EVERY MUM WANTS TO PROTECT HER UNBORN CHILD UPSOT CRYING DANIELLE: When the night comes I ask myself “Man, is this really happening to me? Why I was the chosen one to go through all this?” EVERY MUM PRAYS FOR A PERFECT BABY CLEANE: No one will take her away from us. No one. BUT THE ZIKA VIRUS CHANGES EVERYTHING LOURDES: It’s very sad. Because we always want the best for our kids. DANIELLE & CRYING BABY: Calm down. LOVE IN THE TIME OF ZIKA BY AMOS ROBERTS & GEOFF PARISH MAP – Brazil with Rio, then highlight Recife LETICIA: My name is Letícia, I’m 16 years old, my son Heitor turned 2 months today, and my mom is Lourdes. DANIELLE: I’m Danielle Santos. I’m 29 years old. And I’m the mother of Juan Pedro, 2 months old. CLEANE: My name is Cleane, I’m 17 years old, this is Maria Eduarda, we call her Dudinha, and she’s gonna be 3 months tomorrow. This is the story of three mothers who fiercely love their imperfect babies. Heitor… Juan Pedro… and Maria Eduarda were all born with microcephaly – their heads are abnormally small; their brains, underdeveloped. MORE BATHING SHOTS That can mean severe intellectual impairment, frequent seizures, even blindness and deafness. The scary thing is – no one knows for sure yet. ADRIANNA:  There is no chance to fix it. So it's a problem that will affect that family forever. So it’s very... It's revolting.   GETTING OUT OF THE BATH The birth of these Brazilian babies, and hundreds like them, is sparking a global panic. FILE MONTAGE: “The mysterious disease causing international anxiety…” “The Zika virus is not deadly” other languages… “…but it has been linked to birth defects.” MUSIC Recife, a city famous for its beaches… MUSIC …finds itself at the epicentre of an international health crisis. MUSIC Last year it was struck by a mysterious, mosquito-borne epidemic, which doctors blame for the serious deformities in babies. Ever since, anxious mothers crowd into clinics and pregnant women rush to hospital for reassurance. MUSIC The city’s struggling against an enemy it can hardly see, leaving women who have very little, even more vulnerable. QUESTION Seeing soldiers on the street here, you could be forgiven for thinking there’s a war going on.   CORREIA  Well it is a war against a tiny enemy but which is proving to be very difficult to win. UPSOT DOG BARKING Like many teenagers, Leticia Araújo da Siuva dreamt of escape and longed for fun. LETICIA: Me and my girlfriends would go out at night. Always partying. HEITOR CRYING But there’s no escape now. Young mothers have little time for adolescent dreams. LOURDES It’s like this all day long. All day long it’s like this. He doesn’t sleep. She spends most of the day lying down with him. This is typical of babies with microcephaly– they cry a lot and sleep very little. PAN TO LOURDES Now I’m holding him. But when I’m at work, she doesn’t even eat. She eats popcorn or whatever’s around. LETICIA: Heitor is calm, but he cries a lot. Daily life with him is exhausting because he only wants to be in my arms. HEITOR SLIPS IN BATH Grappling with the needs of a disabled child would challenge any parent – but Leticia’s only a child herself, and relies a lot on her own mum for help. LOURDES PUTS TOWEL ON BABY’S HEAD She was only fifteen when she became pregnant – that’s not unusual here. LETICIA: I went out a lot. To dance. Now I can’t go anywhere - only taking care of him. QUESTION: Leticia, did you plan to get pregnant last year? LETICIA: No. QUESTION: Was it a surprise then? LETICIA: Yes. LOURDES She says it was a surprise - it was no surprise. If you have sex you know you risk being knocked up if you don’t take precautions. LETICIA His father is not involved at all. He doesn’t care. MAKING FORMULA Lourdes had high hopes for her daughter. They’ve been shattered - and she has trouble containing her disappointment. LOURDES While he’s tiny, she has to dedicate herself to him. I don’t have the conditions to do it. If you want children, you have to raise your child. I raised mine. Now she has to raise hers. QUESTION: What upsets you the most? LOURDES: Her rebellion. She used to be a rebel and go out. Now she’s at home all the time. She’s not going anywhere. LOURDES GETS TEARY MUSIC Looking at all the struggling mothers in this rehabilitation clinic, the scale of the crisis really sinks in. Last year some specialists in Recife were seeing as many cases of microcephaly in a week as they used to see in an entire year. UPSOT BABY CRYING Sometimes a baby’s distress makes treatment incredibly difficult. CU SHRIEKING Today Danielle Santos’ son, Juan Pedro, won’t stop screaming for long enough to have his eyesight checked. DANIELLE Calm, calm… The therapist suggests she brings him back once he’s settled down… DANIELLE LEAVING OR RETURNING UPSOT DANIELLE Now you have to open your eyes, my love, not just stop crying. It’s just as distressing for Danielle as it is for her baby. THERAPIST Hey, let’s do it, young man! Let’s do some work? No one can tell her exactly what’s wrong with her son, or how the microcephaly will affect him as he gets older. DANIELLE: Our pain is one that no mother wants to feel. Mothers want babies who aren’t disabled or retarded. We know for sure that at some stage he’ll have some difficulty. EXT HOSPITAL WITH TROLLEY-MAN CROSSING FRAME ADRIANNA In the very beginning we had no idea what had cause this microcephaly. Dr Adrianna Scavuzzi is a gynaecologist and obstetrician on the frontline of this crisis.   GREETS PATIENT ADRIANNA It's really tough for the doctor to see a problem that we cannot fix and that we know that the children will have serious problem in their neurological development. MUSIC This is a nerve-wracking time to be pregnant in Recife. Fifteen year-old Ruana has come to hospital for an ultrasound. RUANA: We just got scared because we don't know what's going to happen from now on. We don't know if the baby will be born sick or not. DOCTOR: Is this your first examination here? Your first time? Last month, Ruana caught Zika – the virus that doctors believe causes microcephaly. It’s spread by mosquitoes, so if you’re pregnant here, you live in fear of something tiny doing permanent damage to your unborn child. RUANA: I was covered in spots, only in my tummy, with fever and headache, I couldn't walk. UPSOT: Look at the mouth. Can you see the little mouth? You can see why she’d be scared – but at least she knew she was sick and came here. 80% of the people with this mysterious virus show no symptoms – so they’ll never even know they’re at risk. DOCTOR: The heart… Ruana is about to find out if her baby has microcephaly. ULTRASOUND GUY: Everything is normal. Congratulations. QUESTION: Ruana, how are you feeling now you get the news? RUANA: Fine. Now I'm fine.  For hundreds of Brazilian women, ultrasounds like this haven’t ended so happily. DANIELLE WITH JUAN PEDRO QUESTION How do you feel about the fact that one mosquito bite, while you were pregnant, did this to Juan Pedro? DANIELLE: It’s still kind of hard to believe it. The population is so big, so why are only the less well-off affected? So many people who are better off, with more money, a higher social class… Why wouldn’t it bite them? Visiting the favelas, it becomes very clear why poor women are bearing the brunt of this crisis… QUESTION The government has been advising women to cover up so they don't get bitten. Is that something you can do here? PREGNANT WOMAN: It’s not possible to wear long sleeves, because of the heat. It's too hot, isn't it?  No way. (7.50) MUSIC The locals know they’re exposed and vulnerable to disease-ridden mosquitoes – they can’t even afford repellent. MUSIC And although they’re told to move out while their homes are fumigated with a toxic spray, there are bigger things to worry about. ADRIANA: I can tell you for sure that a family that cannot buy food they may think about microcephaly, they may think about Zika infection... but it's not the priority.   The biggest problem for the authorities in the fight against Zika – in fact the main reason for its rapid spread - is a lack of plumbing and sanitation. People live next to open drains and store their water in containers – perfect spots for mosquitos to lay their eggs. ELIANA: As you know we are living through an emergency period we are asking people to keep exposed water to a minimum. Please leave that water the longest for two days and preferably keep all the water covered.  - Yes. ELIANA: Do you have any kind of water tank around? - No No water stored here? - No. ELIANA: OK thank you good morning. There’s water everywhere. It feels like an impossible task for the city’s health agents, but if the water can’t be sealed or emptied, they add some organic larvicide. The army’s also been brought in to help across the country - almost a quarter of a million soldiers called up when the President declared this a national emergency. SOLDIER: It looks like there’s no larvae. We have to beat this mosquito. ADRIANNA:  I got angry because it could have been prevented if the government had invest the amount of money necessary to improve the quality of people's life.  UPSOT OLYMPICS VIDEO But the money’s been spent elsewhere. UPSOT OLYMPICS VIDEO The Olympics, starting in August, have cost 14 billion Australian dollars... And the government’s been rocked by corruption scandals. The economy’s also deep in recession – and many hospital staff haven’t been paid in months. FOLLOWING AGENTS IN LANE PAST POOR WOMEN It’s the worst possible time for a public health emergency, but the city’s passionate health workers are doing their best – …even when it means they also come down with Zika and Dengue. ELIANA WITH CUP: A glass is a problem, too. Agents like Eliana Morais know that all it takes is a small act of carelessness – some rubbish left to collect rainwater – to compromise the health of everyone who lives within the neighbourhood. ELIANA: Every day we find all these kind of problems. It’s difficult – it’s impossible to believe that we are going to combat completely the mosquito because of this. (30.19) NATSOT TAPIOCA SELLERS DANIELLE APPEARS IN SHOT TO SERVE LUNCH For mothers like Danielle Santos, struggling to care for a baby with microcephaly, prevention comes too late. More than anything else they need support. Danielle’s 11 year-old daughter helps out – but her husband…? Well, he’s a different story. DANIELLE: I was sleeping with the baby and I suddenly noticed his father taking his clothes, the TV set and DVD player, and going away. So I asked him: “Are you going to leave me here alone, with the baby? You know he cries a lot”. And then he said: “You should have thought about this before. Because I also need attention. You’re doing your job as a mother but you’re forgetting your job as a wife.” The Brazilian media’s full of stories about fathers abandoning children with microcephaly – they even have a name for it - ‘male abortion’. QUESTION: What did your husband want from you? What did he expect? DANIELLE: When he got home, he wanted me to ask him how was his day. Fix his lunch and dinner… He wanted me to eat dinner with him and ask about his day. And at that moment I didn’t have the time for it. MUSIC I was lucky enough to stumble upon one happy story in Recife - the story of Cleane Seerpa and her baby, Maria Eduarda Unlike the other mothers, Cleane never had Zika – in fact she was never even pregnant. CLEANE: Eduarda is not my biological daughter. I’m not her biological mother. I adopted her because her mother has no means. Her father is an alcoholic. Her mother is unable financially or psychologically to look after a child like her. She can’t take care of a normal child, imagine a special one! She’s special. MUSIC Cleane knows the biological parents, and first saw Maria Eduarda in hospital after the birth. She found herself repelled and attracted at the same time. CLEANE: At first I wasn’t thinking of adopting her. When I first saw her, I had a shock. I’d never seen it. I got used to it once I’d spent a whole day with her. Her mother said she didn’t want her, she wouldn’t take care of her because she was born like that. I said “I want her. Don’t give her to anyone else.” CU POURING MEDICINE QUESTION: So tell me what you’re doing now. CLEANE: I’m giving her medicine. It’s an anti-convulsive medicine. PAN TO CLEANE GIVING BABY MEDICINE CLEANE: I hate it, mummy. Yeah, hate it. Cleane was actually studying to become a nurse – but dropped out of her course in order to nurse Maria Eduarda. CLEANE IV: She can’t hear well. She lost her hearing. And she’s lost her eyesight. We’d like her to be able to see so she could smile and recognize us. And if she listens she could talk. Making sounds with her little mouth - she’s still not able to do that. Many babies can do it, but she still can’t. LEG STRETCHING - STARTING TO CRY Every day’s part of a never-ending routine of care and medical visits for this young mother. I first met Cleane at the rehabilitation centre in Recife, it’s also where I met Danielle. It takes them each two to three hours on public transport to get here. Access to therapy for many mothers will be very difficult. UPSOT THERAPIST Mother, she’s angry. CLEANE She has appointments all week long. I’m with her at the doctor every day. Every day, any time they call, I'm with her at the doctor. CLEANE AT THERAPY When she’s in some pain she cries a lot on her side. It was here at the clinic when this 17 year-old first told me that she’d adopted a baby with microcephaly. I was stunned. CLEANE: When I say I adopted her, nobody believes it. But she is mine. I adopted her, she’s mine. I’ve never regretted adopting her. Never. UPSOT MUSIC THERAPY Hear this. This sound here has a higher pitch than this one. Microcephaly isn’t something that can be cured, but early, regular stimulation is essential to develop the brain as much as possible. UPSOT THERAPIST: Through sounds, we’re neurologically stimulating the child. The mothers are hungry for expert advice, and soak up everything that’s on offer. UPSOT MUSIC THERAPY: And it's a nice sound, a sound that they enjoy. I came to Recife expecting to find despair, but in this group I see determination. UPSOT DANIELLE WITH THERAPIST While the world panics about its spread, women like Danielle are living the reality of Zika. Back for a third attempt at the eye test, she knows she has to adjust her dreams for a child with microcephaly. DANIELLE: My dream was having a son who could play well, who could become a soccer player. So today I don’t think about him becoming a soccer player, but about him being able to walk. So if he’ll be able to walk, that’ll be a conquest! And from walking we can start planning new paths for him. MUSIC No one knows how big this pandemic will become… MUSIC …but on the streets of Recife, some Brazilians are struggling to accept the new arrivals. Cleane says she thinks of her baby as a blessing but these unusual children often attract hostility and even disgust. CLEANE: There are lots of prejudice on the streets. Once I was walking by and this lady said “Is this a girl? It looks like an animal.” UPSOT DAUGHTER: Where’s the baby? Why this? Why all this? DANIELLE: This city has to realize that we’re living in a new era. It won’t be rare to see a kid, that’ll later be a teenager, with microcephaly. So they’re gonna be a part of the society mixed with others. MUSIC / BABY CRYING A specialist who’s treated many of these babies told me she was really struck by their mothers’ strength. “They are 100% for the children”, she said. “I think they are warriors.” DANIELLE: The lack of a male presence won’t make me stop fighting for the wellbeing of my son. Looking into his eyes, at his difficulties, I find my strength. He needs me, so I can’t feel sorry for myself, be weak, cry or anything else. Life goes on and I’ll do everything I can for him. MUSIC ENDS