Covid surge in Mozambique

Claudia talks to Dr Lucia Chambal at the Central Hospital of Maputo in Mozambique. She is helping to coordinate the response of the country’s largest hospital to an ongoing surge in new Covid patients. In the last three weeks, they’ve had to create more than new 150 beds to accommodate these patients, including erecting large tents to act as Covid wards in the hospital grounds. Dr Chambal talks about the pressures, saying they’ve admitted many more patients since January than during the entire period between last March and December. A study at New York hospital has revealed the substantial benefits of giving mobilising physiotherapy to hospitalised Covid-19 patients. In the first months of the pandemic at the Montefiore Medical Center when patient numbers dramatically increased, some patients received physiotherapy while others didn’t because of a lack of PPE for therapists. Looking back at the fate of both groups of patients, the hospital has now found that the survival rate of those getting the therapy was twice that of those who didn’t. What makes that result particularly interesting is the people who were given physical therapy were on average older and more likely to have risky health conditions. Yet their chances of survival were higher because of the therapy. Is coconut oil an amazing superfood or an overhyped food fad? Africa Life Clinic’s Dayo Yusif reports from coconut heaven on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast. BBC Health and Science correspondent James Gallagher is Claudia’s studio guest, talking about evidence from Israel that the vaccination programme there is reducing the spread of the coronavirus in the population: whether the drug Budesonide in asthma inhalers prevents Covid illness development: and whether there is such a thing as a superfood. Presenter: Claudia Hammond

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker (Picture: A woman walks with her daughter in Maputo, Mozambique in February 2021. Photo credit: Alfredo Zuniga/AFP/Getty Images.)