First reports of Ebola

In early 2003 a medical emergency swept across the world. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, was a deadly virus which had first struck in southern China but soon there were cases as far away as Canada. William Ho and Tom Buckley were at the forefront of the battle against the epidemic.Photo: The SARS virus (Science Photo Library)

12 Mars 20208min

In 1955 scientists in the US led by Dr Jonas Salk announced they had developed an effective vaccine against polio. The poliomyelitis virus had caused paralysis and death particularly amongst children since time immemorial. Louise Hidalgo spoke to Dr Salk's son Peter, who was one of the first children to be vaccinated by his father, and to a nurse who worked on the polio vaccination programme.PHOTO: Jonas Salk innoculating his son, Peter (Courtesy of March of Dimes)

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Some 300 people died during the first documented outbreak of the deadly disease occurred in the 1970s in the Democratic Republic of Congo - then known as Zaire. The virus was named after the river which flowed close to the village where it was discovered. Two doctors, Dr Jean Jacques Muyembe and Dr David Heymann, were among those who worked to bring the outbreak under control. They spoke to Claire Bowes in 2009.This programme is a rebroadcast.Image: The Ebola virus under a microscope. Credit: Science Photo Library

10 Mars 20208min

In 1918, more than fifty million people died in an outbreak of flu, which spread all over the world in the wake of the first World War. We hear eye-witness accounts of the worst pandemic of the twentieth century.(Photo: An American policeman wearing a mask to protect himself from the outbreak of Spanish flu. Credit:Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

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The story of Dr. Semen Gluzman, a Ukrainian psychiatrist, who took a stand against the psychiatric abuse of political dissidents in the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, Soviet authorities had many dissidents declared mentally ill and confined them to special psychiatric hospitals for 'treatment'. In the 1970s, a young Ukrainian psychiatrist, decided to write a counter-diagnosis of one of the most famous of these incarcerated dissidents. For this, he would pay a high price. Alex Last speaks to Dr Semen Gluzman about his struggle to oppose Soviet punitive psychiatry. Photo: Semen Gluzman in 1989.(Gluzman)

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In 1976 South Asian women workers who had made Britain their home, led a strike against poor working conditions in a British factory. Lakshmi Patel was one of the women who picketed the Grunwick film-processing factory in north London for two years, defying the stereotype of submissive South Asian women. They gained the support of tens of thousands of trade unionists along the way. Lakshmi talks to Farhana Haider about how the strike was a defining moment for race relations in the UK in the 1970s.(Photo: Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick strike committee holding placard 1977 Credit: Getty images)

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The UK was one of the first in Europe to declare it would ban lead from petrol after a successful campaign showing it was poisoning children and leaving them permanently brain damaged. But it took until the year 2000 to finally remove leaded petrol from sale. Lead was first added to petrol in the 1920s to make the fuel run more efficiently. The latest figures show only three countries worldwide still sell leaded petrol. Claire Bowes spoke to Dr Robin Russell Jones from the "Campaign for Lead Free Air" about the battle to show that lead from petrol was dangerous.(Photo: a petrol pump in the UK. Credit: Dr Robin Russell-Jones)

3 Mars 20208min

One of the toughest challenges facing Japan’s economy is that its population is ageing rapidly and its workforce is shrinking dramatically. But a Japanese investment analyst, Kathy Matsui, came up with a visionary idea to help her country, and she even invented a new word for it: Womenomics. The answer, according to her, was to tap into the talent of half the population. Kathy Matsui speaks to Alejandra Martins. (Photo: Kathy Matsui. Courtesy of Goldman Sachs)

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