Three years ago, thousands of pregnant women were infected with the mosquito-borne virus, Zika. The story dominated the headlines. Then, just as quickly as it swept into the American consciousness, media coverage of the crisis seemed to disappear.
Now, their babies are becoming toddlers – and they say the world has forgotten them. For its "Down To Earth" Facebook Watch series of international documentary shorts, CBS News travelled to Brazil to shed light on the day-to-day struggles that these mothers endure as they raise severely developmentally challenged children in the face of poverty and societal prejudice.
We also sought to highlight the selfless and innovative actions of a handful of doctors in northeast Brazil, who are offering free treatment to families battling a frightening array of conditions from crippling joint stiffness and serious vision problems to an inability to swallow. Mothers of children with microcephaly will often travel hours, taking numerous buses, to reach these clinics. And due to the broken state of the sidewalks in these poor corners of northeast Brazil, they often have to carry their toddlers' limp bodies in their arms for vast distances on foot, as well.
When it comes to the treatment of Zika, there is no textbook to look to. Families and doctors are figuring it out as they go. And our objective in this piece was to shed light on the reality of the crisis three years after the rest of the world seemed to have moved on.
In the production of the documentary short, we utilized a supertease to grab users' attention and outline the importance of the piece right from the outset. We also shot, produced and edited the documentary with an eye toward immersive storytelling that might better engage a social audience. The thinking was that, if we could make hundreds of thousands of people in countries all around the world feel as if they were "right there" riding the bus with a struggling single mother or working to manipulate stiffened joints in a Brazilian clinic, then they could truly "feel" the extent of the crisis in a way that is simply not possible in a more traditional 2-3 minute news package or the sort of text-on-screen videos that so often dominate Facebook feeds.
Through carefully crafted language and strategic crossposts across CBS News' network of Facebook accounts, this documentary short and its corresponding trailer garnered more than 742,000 views on social media. In doing so, it was able to cut through all of the lighter fare on social users' newsfeeds and communicate a crucial update on what was once considered a global epidemic.
We also edited together an extended 23-minute version of the doc for YouTube, which generated an additional 57,000 views.
