Brad Pitt Narrates Mini-Series on Health  11/1/05

Mr and Mrs Smith star Brad Pitt has lent his voice to a six-hour documentary on global health.

In RX For Survival:: A Global Health Challenge, which runs on US TV from today (01NOV05) until Thursday (03NOV05), Pitt narrates six one-hour-long episodes, which follow health care workers and researchers struggling to contain disease among the poor.

Pitt, who has made several trips to Africa in the past two years, says, "I've been involved with the issue of poverty - I've been studying it for about a year and half now. I think one of the major causes of that is health, global health.

"I think it could be one of the major issues of the century. There are two things at stake here: one is human interest and the other is self-interest.

We're finding out that there's no safe haven from infectious diseases. It's a plane flight away.

"The human interest is enough - the fact that millions are dying from preventable, curable diseases. But if the human interest isn't enough, then wisdom will tell you that self-preservation is.

"I want to educate myself as much as I can to understand the situation, to understand the solutions."

"I've had the luxury of travel and in the luxury of travel, I've seen the detriments of poverty and I've gone on to see how easy the cures can be - cures that cost cents to the richest nation in the world."