Guinea, land of the forgotten | France 5 | Les Routes de l'Impossible

In a suspense-filled race over the worst possible roads, drivers of bush taxis strive to deliver drugs and vaccines in less than 24 hours. At the other end of the road sick adults and children on borrowed time are waiting. But will they be able to afford the medicine that can save their lives? A surreal trip through Guinea Conakry, where we still find many serious diseases such as polio, diphtheria and rabies. It’s a country in total decline where the broken-down roads grind down the nerves of drivers and the delays they incur are paralysing the country’s economy… And yet, Guinea Conakry, situated in the west of Africa to the south of Senegal, is a rich country. Its earth is packed with minerals such as gold and diamonds, but the people never get a glimpse of them. This film reveals the mind-boggling reality: the hospital in Kissidougou, a town of 200,000, functions without electricity and the duty nurse has nothing but the wreck of an ambulance to go to save a pregnant women in difficulty some 75 kilometres away. Poverty forces families to send their children out to work from the age of 6. In a woodworking plant on the side of the road, we discover no less than 102 children working there and sleeping on the ground in what looks very much like the dormitories of a labour camp. According to UNICEF, 25% of Guinean children take the road to work each morning rather than the one to school, which is often inaccessible! In Guinea Conakry, the forest covers more than a quarter of the country’s surface and, apart from a national highway riddled with pot holes, the population, abandoned by the state, have had to build themselves bamboo ladders along the cliffs in order to move from village to village. They use them at the peril of their lives…