People Fixing the World

How do you help female doctors get back to work when they've given up medicine to look after their families? It's a particular problem in Pakistan where the majority of medical graduates are women who stop working after they get married. Now a scheme has been set up employing them to hold video clinics with patients over the internet, enabling them to work flexibly from home. What's more they're aiming to improve access to health care in Pakistan by targeting their 'computer screen clinics' at people living in deprived parts of the country, where the shortage of female doctors is most acute.Produced by Nick Holland Presented by Tallulah BerryImage credit: BBC

Is a new urban cable car in Mexico more than just a means of public transport? As well as ferrying thousands of people a day, it's been strategically located to link up the poorest neighbourhoods to more affluent parts of the city. It's hoped it will bring growth to a forgotten district, reduce crime and become a means of bridging the social divide. World Hacks travels to Mexico City to see if it can achieve those goals and understand why cities are opting for this usual form of transport.Presenter: Sahar Zand Producers: Elizabeth Cassin and Nick HollandImage: Cable cars above Mexico City / Credit: BBC

Around the world, governments and researchers are experimenting with the introduction of universal basic income. From Finland and Spain to India, the idea of giving every citizen – whether working or not – a set amount of money per month is gaining momentum. It’s claimed to be a fairer and more efficient way of running a welfare system, but we’re only just starting to understand what actually happens when you introduce a basic income for everyone. We look at the evidence and try to establish whether it is an idea whose time has come. Presenter: Mukul Devichand Producer: Jo MathysImage: An Indian man counts currency / Credit: Sajjad Hussain / AFP / Getty Images

Darius has been shot three separate occasions, but the third time was the last. He was met at his bedside by a stranger, who changed his life forever.Victims of violence are, far more likely to be shot, stabbed or violently assaulted a second or third time - as the perpetrators of violence try to silence the victim.In San Francisco, where Darius lived, specially trained case managers visit victims of violence at their bedsides in hospital and work with them to break that cycle of violence, offering practical advice and specialist services to the patients.They claim that speaking with victims of violence immediately after an attack, when they are experiencing a 'teachable moment' they have a far greater chance of changing the patient's life forever.Reporter Sam Judah meets Darius at the site of his third and final shooting, tracing his journey to the hospital, and his meeting with the youth worker who helped him turn his life around.Image: Darius / Credit: BBC

How do you get children who're victims of emotional abuse or physical harm to open up about what's happened to them? In Mexico a psychologist, Julia Borbolla, encourages them to have a one-to-one chat with a cartoon alien that appears on a video screen in a room near her office. What the children don't realise is Julia hears every word of their conversation with the animated creature because she's secretly controlling it from the room next door.She says children are more likely to reveal sensitive information to the cartoon alien than if they were face-to-face with a real person. World Hacks travels to Mexico City to assess whether the tool works and to meet people who're now operating it in public hospitals, women's shelters and within the country's judicial system.(Photo: Psychologist Julia Borbolla Credit: BBC)

Methane emissions from the burps and farts of livestock accounts for around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But the trick to reducing this could lie with some of Kenya’s smallholder farmers. By using very simple techniques to transform the way they manage their soil and animals, dairy farmers are helping their cows emit less methane per litre of milk they produce. And it’s all being paid for by big polluters, in what could become a major form of carbon offsetting. Is this a new frontier in the fight against climate change? World Hacks has been to rural Kenya to find out. Presenter: Vincent Ni Reporter: Harriet Noble

World Hacks goes to Thailand to meet an army of volunteers on the front line in the fight against dangerous diseases, like Ebola and bird flu.Nearly 100 years ago Spanish Flu infected a third of the world’s population and killed about 50 million people. With increased international travel, growing populations and environmental damage, experts warn that viruses now have the potential to spread faster, and we could be on course for another pandemic, with devastating consequences. Pandemics often originate in places where animals and people live in close contact, making it easy for animal diseases to spill over into humans, and where health systems may not be able to pick up on threats and respond quickly. In rural Thailand, 75% of people keep animals in their back gardens, making it hard to keep track of new outbreaks. In 2004, a strain of bird flu swept through the country, as well as Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, infecting more than 125 people and killing about half of them. Vets at Chiang Mai University have started a project called PODD – the full name in Thai means “Look closely and you will see”. They’ve trained up 3,000 volunteers to take photos of dead animals and report any signs of sickness in their communities, helping spot dangerous outbreaks and contain them before they spread.Presenter : Vincent Ni Reporter: Ruth Evans Producer: Charlotte PritchardImage: Vets from the PODD team test chickens during a suspected outbreak / Credit: BBC

A new school in San Francisco thinks it can massively accelerate the speed at which children can learn, using clever technology and smart algorithms to offer each child a bespoke education. AltSchool believes it can achieve results that were only previously possible by giving individual children their own personal tutor. The firm currently runs eight small ‘lab schools’ dotted around the country, all run from their California headquarters. But they have huge plans for expansion, and hope to sell their software to every school in the country. Sam Judah meets the pupils at one of the schools, and the CEO at AltSchool’s nerve centre, to find out what’s behind the company’s big idea.Presenter: Mai Noman Producer: Sam JudahImage: A pupil at AltSchool / Credit: BBC

Lurking in the sewers beneath the streets there are giant blobs of congealed cooking fat known as “fatbergs”. Now one company has come up with a clever way of making money out of them. Their efforts may one day change perceptions of fatbergs – turning the lumps of putrid waste into a valuable commodity.Presenter: Tom Colls Reporter: Nick Holland(Image: A fatberg, Credit: Thames Water)

Thailand in the 1960s was on the verge of a population disaster. Thai women were having seven children on average, and the government was struggling to raise living conditions. Mechai Viravaidya, a young economist who moonlighted as a soap actor, newspaper columnist and teacher, made it his mission to get family planning into every village in Thailand - he wanted to make condoms as easily accessible as vegetables. Mechai realised he could use humour to break down Thai reservations about contraception, launching condom blowing competitions and condom beauty pageants. His efforts were so successful, condoms became known as “Mechais” in Thai, and he was nicknamed “The Condom King” or “Mr Condom”. When the HIV/Aids crisis threatened to engulf Thailand in early 1990s, Mechai, now a government minister, launched a mass media campaign promoting condom use and made condoms available everywhere, from massage parlours to bus stops. It is estimated these preventative measures saved 7.7 million lives. We find out what lessons we can learn from his 45 years of campaigning. Presented by Mai Noman.Presenter: Mai Noman Reporter: Ruth Evans Producer: Charlotte Pritchard