This documentary tells about 15 year old, Jeanna Giese, from Wisconsin in the USA, who survived rabies thanks to an innovative and desperate treatment tried out on her by Dr. Rodney Willougby. His technique involved putting her into a deep coma allowing her body to begin an antibody response to the disease that let Jeanna gradually regained normal function. Subsequent testing of the same technique did not have such good results.
Two years ago, 15 year old Jeanna Giese became the first person, without the aid of a vaccination, to survive Rabies. Rabies is a killer, one of our most ancient and deadly enemies. When doctors see the symptoms, there is nothing they can do. Rabies is 100% fatal.
In the history of humanity, no-one has survived rabies. Once the virus gets into the host body, it moves swiftly through the nervous system, hijacks the brain and always kills the host. As many as 100,000 people die from rabies every year, most of them in the developing world. The smallest bite, a single drop of saliva, will kill. Children are very often the victims.
Dr. Stephen Scholand works in South East Asia battling this curse: "When you see what rabies can do to someone, it's absolutely devastating. The deaths that they have are probably the worst deaths you can imagine. If you have clinical rabies, it's a death sentence, you're going to die".
Modern medicine can save us from killers like Smallpox, Cholera and Typhoid, but despite centuries of searching, there is still no cure for rabies. The age-old treatment remains unchanged; Isolate the victim, tie them down and wait until the virus destroys them.
