Ebola Prevention The Goal of New Chocolate Moose Media Video

OTTAWA, Ontario - Aug. 14, 2014 - PRLog -- Geneva/Ottawa - August 14, 2014


As the worldwide shock over the Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to grow, communications company Chocolate Moose Media (http://www.chocmoose.com) is creating an animated video short to promote prevention of the disease and to help dispel local myths that have sprung up around it.

Nearly 2,000 people have contacted or are suspected of having contacted the Ebola virus since the epidemic’s outbreak in June, according the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/). More than half of them have died.

The video will run between two and four minutes and will be aimed at those who live in areas worst stricken by the disease. Chocolate Moose Media founder Firdaus Kharas will produce more of his award-winning animation to explain how Ebola is contacted and spread.  He intends to focus on prevention.

“There are so many myths that spring up when a disaster like this happens. If we can show the basic facts about the disease, we can help prevent it from spreading,  I intend to attack some of the myths like how drinking vinegar can prevent an Ebola infection,” Mr. Kharas says.

The video is being funded by the United Methodist Communications (http://www.umcom.org/) in Nashville, Tennessee, the global communications agency of The United Methodist Church that has the developing world as one of its focusses. The executive producer is iheed, (http://www.iheed.org) a mobile-health-education innovator in Dublin, Ireland.

The video’s animation will be done in India during the next two weeks before being released on Youtube and made available for free download. The original voiceover language will be English from Sierra Leone, although Mr. Kharas hopes that it will be transitioned into into multiple languages to reach the greatest possible audience.

For further information contact Mike Levin at mlevin@sympatico.ca or Neelley Hicks at NHicks@UMCOM.ORG.

About Chocolate Moose Media

Chocolate Moose Media is the world’s leading producer of animated behaviour-change communications aimed at solving health and social issues around the world. It produces film and animated television with offices in Geneva, Switzerland, and Ottawa, Canada. President Firdaus Kharas uses proceeds from for-profit projects to fund not-for-profit campaigns targeting health and other social issues. These are in the form of animated public service announcements and include Peabody-award winner The Three Amigos (combatting HIV/AIDS); Buzz and Bite (preventing the spread of malaria); No Excuses (targeting sexual and domestic violence); and the Solar Campaign (replacing kerosene lamps with solar lights).