People Fixing the World Folgen

What do you do in a medical emergency when the equivalent of 999 or 911 simply doesn’t exist? After spending time in countries that lack public ambulance services, US paramedic Jason Friesen realised the problem wasn’t a lack of sophisticated ambulances, or the hi-tech medical equipment inside them, but the communication system necessary to get an injured person from A to B in time to save their life. In the Dominican Republic there are no public ambulances but now, in two rural areas, first responders respond to a medical emergency as fast as any ambulance service in the developed world. And all it takes is one smartphone, a handful of willing volunteers, and an Uber-like text system that crowdsources help when disaster strikes.And Dougal Shaw meets the man who is pioneering a way to use recycled plastic to make stronger, longer lasting roads.Presenter: Sahar Zand Reporters: Gemma Newby, Dougal Shaw.Image: First responders in the back of an ambulance / Credit: BBC

This is a story about what happens to your body after you die. In many countries, the current options are burial and cremation, but, both methods come with significant environmental impacts. We’re running out of space for burial in many places, and cremation carries the risk of toxins and greenhouse gases being released. For World Hacks, Sahar Zand travels to the US, where they’re using a new process to deal with the dead. It’s been called “green cremation,” “water cremation” or “resomation” and uses alkaline hydrolysis to mimic and accelerate the breakdown of tissue that would occur in burial. Those who invented the process say it’s an environmentally friendly way to address this fundamental moment in the human life-cycle, but does the evidence stack up?Reporter: Sahar Zand Presenter Mukul DevichandImage: A resomation machine / Caption: BBC

How do you fulfil your sexual needs if you have a disability? How do you masturbate if you have limited use of your hands? These are problems that most able-bodied people have probably never considered. But if you’re in this position it’s something you probably think about a lot. And it’s a problem which Vincent, the founder of a small NGO called Hand Angels, is trying to help with. His group matches volunteers with disabled people to provide a sexual service. Mukul Devichand and Alvaro Alvarez go to Taiwan to hear the remarkably frank stories of the volunteers and the receivers at the service. They open up a world of deep disappointment of those people who haven’t experienced sex or intimacy and an organisation that thinks it has the solution. But can any service ever fill this gap or is it just a shallow fix. Presenter: Mukul DevichandImage: Vincent – the founder of ‘Hand Angels’ / Credit: BBC