First days of India’s Covid vaccination programme

After the first few days of India’s Covid mass vaccination programme rollout, Claudia talks to medical ethicist and health policy expert Anant Bhan about the issues arising from the lack of efficacy data for one of the two vaccines. Will they undermine confidence in this gargantuan public health exercise? Cindy Sui reports from Taiwan about a recent increase in the number of suicides among students there. Claudia talks to Zi-Jun Liu about the obese miniature pigs that he is using to study the dangerous condition of sleep apnoea. Claudia’s guest of the week is Tabitha Mwangi of Cambridge University, with news on making yellow fever vaccines go much further when there’s a serious outbreak, protecting vulnerable children from malaria and how the pandemic is putting commercial sex workers in West Africa at greater risk of HIV infection. Presenter: Claudia Hammond

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker (Picture: BMC medical staff congratulate their colleague Sr. staff nurse Charushila More after she administered the first Covid-19 vaccine shot at KEM hospital, on January 16, 2021 in Mumbai, India. Photo credit: Anshuman Poyrekar/Hindustan Times/Getty Images.)