Johannesburg – Although Covid-19 is a reality for many, many South Africans have not been faced with the grim realities that Healthcare workers have had to deal with.
This reality comes alive in a gripping one-hour M-Net documentary, Zero To Zero, told through the staff of Zuid-Afrikaans Hospital (ZAH).
The hospital is a 100-year-old, private, non-profit hospital in Muckleneuk, Pretoria, and the first Covid-19 patient was admitted in June 2020.
Dr Yanila Nyasulu, is a specialist physician and a central figure in documentary that will air on 4 October at 20:30.
Filmed over 15 months, it was s filmed by a frontline worker at the hospital, radiologist and part time filmmaker Prof Leonie Scholtz and co-directed with Christa Lategan and Shem Compion.
Director for M-Net Channels Jan du Plessis said the story was unique and special because it’s perspectives of those who have been battling this pandemic daily since it began.
“It humanises the frontline workers, showing us a fraction of what they have had to face,” she said.
“It also puts faces to some of the Covid-19 stats – there are interviews with former patients about their experiences at the hospital, as well as with their families about the impact that this has had on them,” said du Plessis.
About why she began filming the hospital’s fight against Covid-19, Prof Leonie Scholtz says in the documentary: “When the pandemic started, I immediately realised that this is one catastrophic event where no photographers were allowed. Being a photographer myself, and also having access to the inner sanctum of the frontline, I felt obliged to document it.”
Filming the events as they unfolded presented a challenge for the team, as they had no idea how the story would unfold.
“We dealt with people going through real life and death situations, so our focus remained on the human spirit. The constant changing narrative was immensely difficult, but the personal journeys delivered a wonderful and authentic story,” said Producer, Christa Lategan.
With some narration by actress Jana Cilliers (Die Boekklub, Egoli), Zero to Zero also features interviews with various experts, including celebrated epidemiologist Prof Salim Abdool Karim.
To read more political news and views from this week’s newspaper, click here.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
