Ebola may no longer be in the headlines in the U.S., but the disease is still widespread in East Africa. To help make sure Americans don’t forget that the biggest outbreak of Ebola in history is still raging on, Jennifer Lawrence and her Hunger Games co-stars appeared in a PSA for the Ebola Survival Fund.
The spot was produced by Jeffrey Wright, who plays Beetee in Mockingjay, produced the video. As Entertainment Weekly notes, Wright already has an interest in the region and began focusing on the Ebola crisis in December 2013, when a two-year-old boy in Guinea died from the disease.
Lawrence, Julianne Moore, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth and Mahershala Ali all appear in the video, along with Partners in Health founder Dr. Paul Farmer. Wright started the video by pointing out how hysterical U.S. media reacted while there were cases here. However, since then, the fight against Ebola has been pushed to the back pages.
“We were so blind to the differences between the conditions (in the United States) and the conditions (in West Africa) that we thought that the virus could be equally potent here at home,” Wright told EW. “I just found it intensely ignorant, not only of the realities in West Africa, but also enormously lacking in self-awareness about who we are, what we’re capable of, and what our privileged position in the world community means.”
Wright hopes that the video will raise awareness for the Ebola outbreak. He is urging those that watch it to donate to the Ebola Survival Fund.
Over 6,000 people have died from Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
image courtesy of INFphoto.com
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