hausler documentary

Science journalist Thomas Häusler has created a 25-minute documentary about phage therapy. Commissioned by the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences, it has been just released on their YouTube channel.

The film tells the story of a patient with a chronic lung infection due to a congenital disease that was treated as a last resort with phage therapy in the Geneva University Hospital. It is one of just a few cases treated in Switzerland. The film discusses the chances that phage therapy brings and the hurdles for its wider deployment. While it starts off in Switzerland, it moves on to Belgium (QAMH and University Hospital of Leuven) and features Jean-Paul Pirnay, an EMA representative (European FDA), Jon Iredell, and even Phage Directory.

The film is part of Phage Therapy Forum, a project funded by the Swiss National Foundation, which Thomas co-leads with the phage researcher Alexander Harms from ETH Zurich. Their aim is to improve awareness of phage therapy among the Swiss public but also of other stakeholders like government, medicine, politics etc. They are fostering a co-creation process to find solutions for making phage therapy more easily accessible in Switzerland.