Health Check

New antiviral pills to treat Covid are coming thick and fast. Pfizer have just announced their new antiviral Paxlovid in the same week UK’s MHRA was the first country in the world to approve Molnupiravir – Merck’s pill launched last month. So how do the two antivirals compare? And a report from the longest operating milk bank in North America. Since 1974, the Mothers’ Milk Bank in San Jose, California has been collecting breast milk to help nurture vulnerable babies (especially premature ones) at a critical time in their lives. Today it supplies about 500 gallons of breast milk a month reaching over 80% of California’s newborn intensive care units (or NICU’s) and serves eleven hospitals in other U.S. states, as far afield as New York.Who donates all this milk and how is the milk treated to ensure it’s safe and nourishing for babies?Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: A hand holding pills. Photo credit: Thana Prasongsin/Getty Images.)

An International team of scientists has launched a global hunt for rare people who may be genetically resistant to SARS CoV-2 infection. Individuals who’ve been exposed to the virus living in families where everyone else in the household got infected, who repeatedly tested negative and didn’t mount an immune response. Claudia Hammond speaks to immunologist Evangelos Andreakos, part of the team at the Biomedical Research Foundation in Athens about this fascinating quest. And Claudia hears from Norway about more reassuring research into Covid vaccination in pregnancy.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: A woman walking on the streets of Manhattan, New York City. Photo credit: Lechatnoir/Getty Images.)

New evidence from Sweden and France on the benefits of mixing and matching doses of different types of Covid vaccine. The impact misinformation around treating Covid with Ivermectin is having on the Neglected Tropical diseases where the drug is known to work. And are oat and soy milks as nutritious as cow’s milk? Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: A healthcare worker holds vials of the Covaxin and Covisheld vaccines in Allika Village, India. Photo credit: Pallava Bagla/Corbis/ Getty Images.)

New Covid vaccine from Valneva produces stronger immune response when compared to AstraZeneca, the French company reports, with no severe cases of Covid-19 seen in either group. And new positive research on lateral flow tests. Plus guest Graham Easton discusses the urgent need for teaching climate and environmental health in medical schools.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: Coronavirus vaccine vials on a laboratory shelf. Photo credit: Joao Paulo Burini/Getty Images.)

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 from a virulent cervical cancer. A sample of those cancer cells was taken at the time, and the way they behave has changed medical science forever, contributing to everything from the polio vaccine to drugs for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. As the WHO give a posthumous award, Claudia discusses how the Henrietta Lacks legacy raises issues of global health equity.Plus with a Malaria Vaccine given a historic green light by the WHO to protect children in Africa, what are the distribution difficulties in countries which carry the greatest burden of disease?And what’s behind the low rate of Covid-19 vaccinations in Taiwan? We hear from one resident about why she’s chosen to have a home-grown Medigen vaccine which hasn’t yet completed all its clinical trials – and another who wants to wait for an alternative. Scientists say that trials about to start in Paraguay should show whether it stimulates enough immunity to protect people in the way the AstraZeneca vaccine does. Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: Henrietta Lacks, after whom HeLa cells are named, standing outside her home in Baltimore, USA. Photo credit: Getty Images.)

Trials stopped early of a new Covid antiviral pill, Molnupiravir, as it may cut numbers of people in hospital by about a half. Claudia Hammond discusses the ethical questions of who should be given it. Plus Unicef report on findings about childhood mental health before and during the pandemic. And a new exhibition on the researchers and trial participants outwitting cancer.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Photo: An experimental Covid-19 treatment pill called Molnupiravir. Photo credit: Merck/Reuters)

Many people have struggled with their mental health during the pandemic, but still don’t always feel free to discuss it, especially at work. Stigma remains a problem and discussing your difficulties at all is off-limits. For many years in England a campaign called Time To Change tried to change attitudes and the evidence from that and other initiatives was used to launch campaigns in India, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda in 2019. Sue Baker, Mind’s International Health Advisor, and Rosemary Gathara, Director of Basic Needs, Basic Rights in Kenya discuss the findings of the campaigns with Claudia Hammond. Matt Fox, Professor of Global Epidemiology at Boston University in the US, joins Claudia to talk about the latest global picture of Covid, mask wearing at basketball games in the US and the Kindness Test. And they look at research that suggests too much free time is bad for us.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: A woman sitting in a room. Photo credit: Jasmin Merdan/Getty Images.)

In 2020 Vietnam ran a successful track and trace system, with very few coronavirus infections and for a long time no deaths at all, while other countries had thousands. In 2021 things haven’t gone so well and since July strict stay at home orders have been in place in some cities. Nga Pham, a journalist from BBC World News, and software engineer Kevin Vu talk about what life is like in Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City.Dr Monica Lakhanpaul, Professor of Integrated Community Child Health at University College London, talks to Claudia Hammond about a mystery disease outbreak in the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. The symptoms are fever, joint pains, headaches and nausea. People born premature can have an increased risk of developing heart problems later in life. For the first time researchers have shown that breast milk can improve heart performance in premature babies. The new study was done by Afif El-Khuffash who looks after premature babies and is Clinical Professor of Paediatrics at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. And Monica and Claudia discuss the latest research into long Covid in children.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Pam Rutherford(Picture: A resident rides her bicycle near a make-shift barricade in Hanoi during the lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19. Photo credit: Nhac Nguyen/AFP/Getty Images.)

How art and gardening has saved some people’s mental health during the pandemic. Claudia visits the most wonderful allotment to find out how one community in the UK has benefited.Nightmares and how people with psychosis can be plagued and even traumatised by bad dreams, but that there is a way of dealing with them. Plus, can kindness help you live a long life and evidence on whether dogs feel jealous! Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright(Picture: Close up of women planting salad seedlings. Photo credit: Betsie Van der Meer/Getty Images.)

When was the last time you did something really kind for someone or someone else did something really kind for you? Claudia Hammond and guests are looking at the place of kindness in today’s world, asking what it really means, what happens in our brains when we act kindly and whether there can ever be a role for it in the cut-throat worlds of business and politics. She hears what kindness means to people in Kenya, Chile and in the UK. And with many aspects of kindness remaining under-researched, with your help Claudia and Robin Banerjee, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex, are asking you to fill in the gaps by taking part in the Kindness Test.Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Erika Wright