Anu Anand travels across the globe to investigate how different countries are tackling cancer, one of the world’s biggest killers. In this first of six programmes, Anu travels to the freezing plains of Mongolia to find out why these traditionally nomadic people, living in a rugged environment, are so prone to the slow and silent killer - liver cancer. She asks why it is hitting Mongolians so hard and meets one local matriarch who is leading a crusade to help those who cannot be cured to...

Dr Kevin Fong concludes his exploration of the boundaries between the medical profession and other industries for valuable lessons that might be of use to us all. In this final episode, Kevin talks to people who have spent their lives investigating what it takes to make high-performance, high-reliability systems work safely when lives are on the line. Since the days of Project Apollo, people have come to rely more and more heavily upon the digital computer. Whether it is aerospace,...

In the third programme in the series, Dr Kevin Fong explores the concept of ‘lean’ in healthcare. He visits Toyota’s largest car assembly plant in the United States and discovers how the company’s legendary management philosophy – the Toyota Production System – is being implemented in hospitals, in an effort to improve patient care. Toyota’s philosophy of continuous improvement aims to increase quality and flow whilst decreasing cost. But whilst this may work well for the mass production of...

Dr Kevin Fong continues to explore the boundaries between the medical profession and other industries for valuable lessons that might be of use to us all. The second programme recounts the ups and downs of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The story begins in the early 1990’s, when NASA was in a very different place from the glory days of the Apollo era. Still dealing with the fall-out from the Challenger accident and other problems with its unmanned missions, the agency’s budget was...

In a new four-part series for BBC World Service and The Open University, broadcaster and medic Dr Kevin Fong explores what healthcare can learn from other organisations that succeed and fail. In this programme, Kevin joins a helicopter air ambulance crew in the United States and discovers how the combination of commercial pressures and de-regulation have resulted in helicopter EMS becoming one of the most dangerous occupations in the country. According the National Transport Safety Board,...

Dr Margarita Holmes is one of the best-known advisers on sex and relationships in the Philippines, drawing on her extensive clinical experience as a psychologist. In this programme she talks to people with HIV/Aids about the ethical and personal dilemmas they face. In a series of intimate and searching conversations, she hears their stories about confronting taboos, choosing who to tell and when, and how they maintain relationships while carrying the virus. In a country where the Catholic...

Dr Peter Mugyenyi runs one of Africa’s largest HIV medical research institutes, the Joint Clinical Research Centre in Kampala, which he helped to found in the early years of Uganda’s AIDS epidemic. Uganda was the first African country in which AIDS was identified. Peter explains the realities of HIV treatment in Ugandan clinics today, a decade after effective drugs against the virus started to become more widely available in African countries. Life prospects for hundreds of thousands of...

Former UK Health Secretary Norman Fowler continues his investigation into what works and what does not when it comes to reducing the rate of HIV/Aids. He travels first to Russia where the infection rate is still rising, mainly among drug addicts. He finds tough drug abstinence programmes in place rather than needle exchanges and the use of methadone, policies which have been applied effectively elsewhere. And, he hears testimony of the stigma and suffering endured by Russian homosexuals....

Former UK Health Secretary Lord Fowler focuses on his own experience. When the virus hit Britain, and despite opposition from then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he pushed through a major public information programme. Now, 30 years later, Lord Fowler travels across the globe to examine a set of simple but effective policies which can keep people safe and healthy - and to inquire why they still meet fierce resistance in some parts of the world. Photo: Aids Activists Rally In Front...

Tony Fauci looks back at the scientific breakthroughs that have transformed HIV/Aids from a death sentence to a disease that can now be treated and prevented. Having watched in horror as his patients quickly died from the disease in the US in the early 1980s, as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he has dedicated his career to fighting it. He talks to the Aids activists who pressurised the US government and Dr Fauci himself to find the drugs they so...

A one-off special panel discussion on one of the world’s most complex and devastating food issues: diabetes. Presenter Anu Anand is joined by a panel of experts, food industry players and campaigners as they respond live to questions brought up by the documentaries and beyond. On social media, phone, email and live on-air, anyone can be part of the virtual audience for this interactive panel programme. From the role of fast food companies and the controversial sugar tax, to everyday...

Mexicans are the world’s biggest consumers of fizzy drinks, many argue that Mexicans are quite simply addicted to them. They are part of daily life. But Mexico’s government says it is fighting back, and not long ago introduced the first-ever sugary drinks tax imposed at a national level. Katy Watson speaks to the ministers who proposed it, the companies who opposed it and the Mexicans who are dying of diabetes, and in some cases still enjoying their favourite sweetened drinks. In a country...

Smitha Mundasad visits the Bronx in New York City, one of North America’s poorest and most diverse boroughs. Type 2 diabetes is now so common here that people say every family is touched by the disease. Hispanics, blacks and other ethnic minorities suffer particularly high rates and even young children are developing the disease. Researchers here are working with patients to better understand how type-2 diabetes develops and how to combat it. Smitha discovers that the high blood sugar we...

The tiny, idyllic Pacific islands which make up the Kingdom of Tonga are setting for an unlikely and acute health crisis. With around 90% of Tongans overweight or obese, and with rates of diabetes in adults approaching 40%, Tongans have seen health deteriorate and life expectancy fall. Katy Watson explores the relationship between size and status in deeply religious Tonga, and hears how a decades-old policy of importation has led to the abandonment of the traditional Tongan diet in favour of...

Type 2 diabetes is taking on epidemic proportions around the world, and South Asia is at its epicentre. Presenter Anu Anand travels to Sri Lanka where one in ten adults have type 2 diabetes, and another one in ten have early signs of the disease - so called ‘pre-diabetes’. That’s four million people on this tiny island nation alone. Palm-fringed beaches lined with stalls selling fresh tropical fruits and sea food are not hard to find here. So why are so many people, in both urban and...

For a loved one to die is devastating enough. But to lose those closest to us in war or conflict, and not to know where they are or how they died, compounds the grief and hugely complicates the grieving process. Families can not mourn fully, because they are unable to lay their loved ones to rest. Claudia Hammond reports from Bosnia Herzegovina, where thousands of people have missing relatives, and from Cyprus, where hundreds of Greek and Turkish Cypriot families have been waiting 40 and...

Huge advances in technology now mean people can be kept alive longer, blurring the boundary between life and death. This intensifies the dilemmas for doctors, patients and their families. Different cultures and religions have reacted in a variety of ways - from preserving life at all costs, to euthanasia, with many countries sitting somewhere in between. Claudia visits Jerusalem in Israel to explore how the religions there, shaped over many centuries, have adapted to medical advances at...

The truth about mortality is that, when it comes to global figures, it is not known what people die of because more than half of the deaths in the world are not registered. Yet all public health programmes rely on mortality data to decide where to put resources. A lack of accurate data can mean that funding allocation is distorted. Even when data is collected, the cause of death can be incorrect and cultural factors can affect the way the forms are filled in. This is not a new problem as...

Tiny babies are, from birth, active learners. They don’t wait for the world to come to them. Claudia Hammond explores the very latest research about what influences the developing mind of the new born infant. Dr Caspar Addyman from the Babylab at Birkbeck, University of London, describes the biggest ever internet survey of babies’ laughter, which concludes that babies really do get the joke. Professor Celeste Kidd and researchers from the University of Rochester in the US reveal that...

The first 24 hours are the most crucial in their survival for the 15 million premature babies born every year. And the stark truth is that survival depends on where in the world a baby is born. Professor Joy Lawn is in the studio with Claudia and Suhail Haleem reports from Goa, where simple measures are producing dramatic results. And, we hear from professor Neil Marlow about the study which has followed babies born at less than 26 weeks for 19 years, to find out the long term effects on...

Claudia Hammond exposes a hidden problem which occurs before life has even begun. Nosiphiwo was ostracised by her husband’s family in South Africa after years of trying, in vain, for a baby. Stories like Nosiphiwo’s, of social stigma and even physical abuse and destitution, are common in low-income countries, where most of the millions of infertile women in the world reside. While programmes tackle the causes of infertility, such as preventing and treating sexually transmitted infections,...

In Japan hundreds of thousands of young people withdraw from society for years or even decades. They are known as hikikomori and Claudia Hammond travels to Tokyo to discover more about this mysterious condition and why it is so prevalent in Japan.

If you have a mental health problem, where you live in the world makes a big difference to the care you receive. In many lower and middle income countries, three-quarters of people with mental health problems don’t have access to mainstream mental health services. Even in wealthier, developed countries, the figure is close to 50%. Claudia Hammond investigates some of the alternatives that occupy this ‘treatment gap’. Psychiatrist Dr Monique Mutheru is one of just 25 psychiatrists in...

July 22, 2011 has been described as the day Norway cried. After detonating a car bomb in Oslo, killing eight and injuring many more, Anders Breivik took a ferry to the island of Utoya. There, dressed as a policeman, he began a murderous spree, hunting down and indiscriminately shooting young people on the island who were attending a youth camp. Seventy seven people were killed in total, many of them teenagers, and hundreds injured. This was the worst mass murder in Norwegian post-war...