In a discussion with Malaria No More, Netflix director Alex Braverman, discusses the new five-part docuseries on Netflix, “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates”, that premiered September 18th, including an episode exploring the fight against malaria. Here is what was discussed:

Can you tell us about the episode you worked on, 'Episode 5: Can we outsmart disease'?

BRAVERMAN: As a broad overview on the series, it's looking at the future, and the issues that Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation are passionate about, concerned about and invested in. My episode was the global health episode. In Gates' world, that means a lot of things. But malaria definitely tops the list, because it impacts so many children in particular.

And that has been part of the Gates philanthropy mission for the last few decades. But the episode itself, the show, is very optimistic and innovation driven. And so, this episode explores how we've basically eradicated very few diseases. Yet there is the idea that if we can eradicate malaria, we would be saving hundreds of thousands of children's lives every year.

From a story perspective, the show explores how we would go about doing that? Then we look at the various approaches that are being either undertaken currently or considered. The two big ones that are featured in the show are monoclonal antibodies. So, we traveled to Kenya and looked at the study that's being done by Dr. Bob Seder and others in NIH's Cellular Immunology Section.

The other approach that we looked at was gene drive, which they're gearing towards in Burkina Faso and other places. But we spent some time there with one of the key investigators, and essentially the episode interweaves these two approaches along with some history, context and the stakes - the stakes being somewhere between 400 and 700 thousand kids per year under the age of five dying from malaria. Yet, if it were taking place in Europe or North America, we would have it figured out by now.

What did you learn personally by directing this particular episode?

BRAVERMAN: I became interested in this topic personally around the time of the Zika craze, because of the attention that was given to Zika, which is obviously a horrible, scary thing, but actually a portion of the population [affected by Zika is] much smaller than malaria. I was working on a newsmagazine show, and what I realized was that the malaria story ...although bigger .... was essentially less 'sexy' in some ways. Its just malaria has been around forever, and it's been mostly eradicated in North America, etc.

And it was surprising to me that we don't talk about it. To some extent, in Western North American, the concern amounts to if you're traveling on vacation somewhere and you might need to get a prescription to protect from malaria. But beyond that, people don't really know what malaria is or how it kills people or who it targets. So, I tried doing a story about that about 7 or 8 years ago, and that was around the time when I met Dr Bob Seder for the first time, when he was working on a vaccine. Now he's working on monoclonal antibodies.

But that's how my interest in this came about, how my interest started.

So, when I was approached years later to work on an episode on malaria, it was like a perfect resurfacing of something that I cared about a lot. And finally, I felt like not only did I have the opportunity to tell that story, but it had advanced in such a way where the vaccine trials from the past were sort of the prelude to what's happening now, which in many ways is more promising and more exciting.

What surprised me when doing this episode was just how long it takes to implement new approaches and technologies, and how complicated it becomes interfacing between governments, citizens and financing. For example, the coordination it takes to even get a study off the ground. As a director, in my world, a project is considered long if it takes a year or two years, but in the malaria fight, it can take a decade or longer.

So, I'm just really in awe of the commitment, dedication and patience that the people working on this have. I'm also reassured knowing that even though the scientific process moves at a glacial pace, it is still being done in a way where you can really trust the results and the outcome.

I was also surprised to walk away feeling hopeful. I do think that the time scale here is overwhelmingly large. But in spending time with Dr. Seder, Bill Gates and others who are really invested in this, their optimism was contagious. And the results that we're starting to see are really encouraging.

Why should people watch this episode and what would you hope they would take away from it?

BRAVERMAN: Whether you're particularly interested or concerned or not with malaria specifically, one of the exciting takeaways from this episode is that you walk away realizing that if we can prevent or stop the spread of malaria, just think of all the other health breakthroughs that we could achieve as well.

The technologies that they're using for malaria, namely antibodies and gene drive, these are not malaria specific technologies. They're technologies, that if successful in this for malaria, essentially become a test case. The implications are huge. Like we're talking about then being able to use gene drive research to stop other forms of diseases or being able to use the same antibody technology to prevent other kinds of diseases. And so that's the really exciting thing here is that if this works, not only are you saving almost a million children's lives every single year, but the implications for where we can take this are massive. That's what's exciting about it to me. It's really huge stakes.

In this episode, Bill Gates says that it would be one of mankind's biggest achievements to finish off malaria. What do you say after having directed this project?

BRAVERMAN: Yeah, it would be! I don't know if I can say it better than him. Again, just go back to the numbers. At least half a million children every year die from something that we, in the United States, have the ability to prevent by taking a pill or having air conditioning or just not having standing water all over the place. And so, it's just so in our reach to be able to take care of this. And if we could pool our resources and our attention and our compassion and empathy, it feels very attainable and achievable. And I think it would be a staggering, beautiful achievement.

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