The Happy Pod: The simple plastic sheet saving lives

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Survey.

I'm Holly Gibbs and in this edition

I haven't seen any intervention that is saving women as much. So it's it's amazing.

The simple plastic sheet that is saving the lives of thousands of women after childbirth. Also, the friendship spanning six decades and thousands of kilometres.

Well she's just a very special person in my life. I'm very blessed to have her.

We don't have the same blood running in our veins but we are like sisters. It's really special.

The Fishing Group supporting people with cancer.

I'm here in this moment in time and it's just lovely. I get peace and separation. All the doctor's appointments. You just want it to go on forever.

be myself and it's just I can control what I can do.

Adapting homes to help people with ADHD.

We start with a simple plastic sheet that is saving the lives of tens of thousands of women all over the world. Every year around fourteen million women globally have excessive bleeding after birth and seventy thousand die. But researchers found that using a plastic drape to measure blood loss and then giving faster treatments has led to a sixty percent lower risk of serious complications.

As soon as we see that she's lost that that amount of blood that is significant, we now immediately give her the bundle treatment. And the bundle treatment is the M-O-T-I-V-E. And that's where we have the E-motive, which is an intervention.

We needed to demonstrate that using the drape and using the bundled treatment as Hadisa mentioned. would in fact improve the outcomes. So we needed to design and conduct a definitive clinical trial. Which found a a tremendous reduction in the number of women who were bleeding excessively or having surgery, or indeed dying from postpartum hemorrhage. These were all reduced with the emotive in the

So Dr. Hadiza, how successful has this been in Nigeria?

very, very successful. In fact, I haven't seen any intervention that is saving women as much as the emotive trial. I've had people saying that from the day they started using the emotive intervention, not a single woman has died. you know, due to excessive bleeding. So it's it's amazing and apart from saving life, it's even making our labor words very clean. Definitely healthcare workers can see the impact because We are saving women.

The recommendation from the World Health Organization and other international bodies supports the use of it throughout the world. So the the recommendation isn't restricted to just low income countries. The need for a for an objective measurement device like this blood collection drape is is needed for every vaginal birth. For every delivery throughout the world,

And for both of you, a personal question, Professor Ari, let's start with you. How does it feel to be working on something that is saving lives and making such a difference to these women?

Uh it's a tremendous feeling. I've been doing clinical trials research. uh for uh nearly three decades. But to have a trial that produces the findings that e-motive trial did, which was a massive reduction in women suffering severe postpartum hemorrhage or dying from it. is not very common. But then to see that research finding being translated into policy and recommendations, and then health ministries and governments and healthcare providers throughout the world

I've worked as an uh doctor obstetrician in Nigeria for three decades and I've seen so many mothers, so many mothers come and have excessive bleeding and die in front of me and without having the opportunity to save them. So really you know, with their findings of the re the way, you know, the intervention has really or is really saving lives. I mean It it it was a fill in that finally we've gotten something. And we're able to do this in six months.

Doctor Hade Kumarasami.

Joy and Diane first met back in nineteen sixty five via a letter.

Back in the sixties there was a pen pal column in the Vancouver Sun, which was the provincial newspaper, and uh one of my hobbies was pen pals, so when a name came up from Australia, which happened to be Jenny. Um I wrote to her because I'd always been interested in Australia, and I was twelve at the time, so I sent my letter off to Jenny. And then what happened, Joy?

Well, Jenny got so many replies that she said to me, she was my friend and she said, Oh, would you like one of the letters? And lo and behold it come from Diane Sennishaw from Canada. And that's where it started. Then I wrote back to her.

The girls remained close throughout their teens, writing to each other regularly about school, music, and friends. As technology has evolved, they've switched from letters to emails and now texts and video calls.

I'm very aware if Joy writes me in the middle of the night, I tell her that she has to go to bed and get some sleep.

Yeah.

And Owen remember that one time, Joy, when I got mixed up with phoning and I phoned you in the middle of the night? Yeah.

Yeah. I said, Oh don't worry about it, just keep talking. She said

I go ring you back.

Ha ha ha.

The friendship has also shifted and grown as time has gone by.

when our children were small and, you know, we're working and but sort of as we've got older things have changed, hasn't it? We got closer and

Yeah, we have. And I think the the real special thing about our families is that when Joy and I started getting too busy to write Our mums were retired and they became penpels and they kept us in touch. through their letters too. So even though we were busy, we never lost that relationship. We still knew about each other, even if we weren't writing back and forth as often. So I I'm very thankful that that our mums kept us in touch.

Yeah, me too.

After fifteen years of writing to each other, the women first met in person in nineteen eighty, in a small town of Renmark in South Australia, where Joy lives. Since then they've met up several times, with their husbands in tow.

So we've been to Australia six times, right, Joy?

That's right.

And Joy, how many for you?

Three we've been to Canada.

And another nice thing is that both our men like each other too, which makes it easier for us because that you know, that uh is important in a relationship that you're that the couples are close, not just the women.

Joy and Diane say one of the benefits of having a best friend on the other side of the world is that when you tell them your secrets, they don't get spread into the local community.

But I'm so comfortable with Joy and I just feel that uh I can tell her safely anything, so she's my confidant. Like she was just telling me about some letters she wrote about things that maybe she should burn before she dies, because maybe nobody else should read them. It's just it's a safe place for me and I can vent with her. In fact, you know, I consider her a a a sister. I have two sisters.

We don't have the same blood running in our veins but we are light cisterns.

Yeah.

It's really special.

They hope their story will encourage other people to not let distance be a barrier to maintaining close relationships.

Distance doesn't have to influence how you feel about a person, you know, like even if I hadn't met Joy, I think I still would be very connected to her just because we we we are very similar. And you know, don't Let distance be a deterrent for anything.

It it'd be nice if more people wrote or had a relationship like you and I have. It's really important, obviously, to you and to me, and it was to our mums. So you know, if you've got a friend overseas it I think it's really important that you try and keep the connection going.

And I think I won the lottery because I'm really glad that I got joy.

Well, I reckon I won the lottery.

Yeah.

Joy and Diane speaking to Helena Burke.

For Nibby, for Jane, for Heather and Andrew, this is a sound of he

Evening.

I'm here in this moment. In time and it's just just lovely. Like when you go in the supermarket and you hear that the equipment that they have in hospitals. Yeah.

So let's lift up. Cast out.

I get peace and separation from all the doctors' appointments.

Thank you.

Well, you just want it to go on forever.

Eighteen years ago, Gillian Payne set up fishing for life to teach fly fishing to people with breast cancer. Andrew represents the less than one per cent of sufferers who are men. He was diagnosed a year ago.

You can see the difference in them.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well yeah, totally different now. He wouldn't talk, he'd be sat in a chair, he'd just there's no point carrying on.

Put it through your finger like we did last time.

I can see he's not thinking about anything else.

And pull from behind.

I think June just wanted to give back and it's amazing. I don't know how many she's set up but this one's great.

Today there are ten fishing for life groups all over the country free for anyone with breast cancer.

That's the first dropper.

Heather is one of the volunteer coaches.

Well I'm gonna do my very best

Heather was a volunteer for almost a decade before she got her own diagnosis.

So I phoned Gillian and said I've become one of the girls.

Yeah.

If I can help anyone to catch some fish that would be great. Enjoying the sunshine in the fresh air. ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n mynd.

Wait.

Wow you've got

We first fish, I've never caught a fish before.

Ha ha.

Really exciting'cause I normally just catch weed.

So I'm sort of halfway through my treatment.

Adrian is helping to coach Libby.

Is he good?

That's wrappish.

Ha ha ha!

We're casting at the same time and we've hooked each other. I'm learning all the time.

Adrian first came here as a husband supporting a wife. But when she died he stayed on as a volunteer.

It was literally a week before Christmas. Four months ago. Ish. Yeah. This, you know, helps me sort of have a break from thinking about things, yeah.

Right.

Yes, I...

We all get as much out of it, all the volunteers, as much as they do. And when you see the people and how much satisfaction and how it changes their lives.

Hundreds have helped here and have been helped. Finding peace and hope from the steady concentration of casting a line.

Oh thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Very much.

Three months ago I wasn't doing anything, just sitting at home, getting depressed, and this stops that process. All your worries and your troubles seem to just melt away.

Coming up on the Happy Pod, protecting a rare rainforest in Northern Ireland and endangered birds in India.

It's a win-win for the community staying on the bank of the river because they are getting seasonal employment, as well as a win-win for the species that they are getting protection from the people on the bank of the river.

You're listening to The Happy Pods, to Australia with homes that are being adapted for ADHD. It's thought one in twenty children around the world have the neurodivergent condition. It can lead to a range of issues, including difficulty with attention span and impulsive behaviour. Louise Milan from ABC News went to meet one family in Tasmania.

I've pulled up to a suburban unit in Lonsen. It's home to Linda and her two boys, and we're keeping a little quiet at first because four year old Aemon is napping. Linda and Evan both have ADHD and both boys have autism.

I guess I never quite know that

Yeah.

I'm overthinking it, I think, is for me is like, okay, I've been I'm having a cup of tea, okay, I should sit there, I should do this.

Through chatting with other families about ADHD, reading articles and listening to podcasts, she realized something had to change. Like many kids, especially those with ADHD, Evan and Amon seek a lot of sensory stimulation. Jumping, spinning, hanging upside down. Their house has hard floors which weren't suitable. Instead, there's a soft, squishy mat in the living room.

It feels like I'm walking on. Pillows. If you just take your socks off, it will feel nice on your feet.

In the playroom, the star of the show is a bright blue hammock-like swing hanging from the roof. In the corner a climbing frame with two gymnastics rings attached with rope. So now you're putting your feet through one loop. And your foot in the other one and you're hanging from a bar, sitting down into it.

Yeah and

For Linda, creating a space for her children with movement based activity in mind is really important. The key is to have a stimulating environment. Putting her children in front of a screen just wouldn't cut a For eleven year old Evan, the designing of the play area has had huge benefits.

It's like a feeling where you Um I can be myself. And it's just I can control what I can do.

Linda's family has also embraced visual cues.

So uh

Uh

Serial or visible.

I know it sounds really basic like but having my kettle, my um tea, coffee, sugar and whatever I drink right there, out, ready, and things I access all the time actually visible helps me.

And there's the easy hack of labeling baskets around the house for placing specific items. Known informally as the ADHD tax, many with the condition have to repurchase items like watches and keys because they regularly lose them. Can also be a big challenge for people with ADHD, so to avoid brain overload, it can be helpful to stash stuff in easily accessible spots. In the boys' playroom, a couch cushion lifts up.

I find it hard to get out of bed and get dressed on time. I can't make my body actually do it, but I want to. And so I've put this up so then I can do this.

Yes. And you're lighting up the lights when you press them.

And then they'll be on. Yeah. And then when I finish something, I turn them off.

A tour of Linda's place has shown me that one person and a bit of creative thinking can go a long way to making life easier for people with ADHD. And Linda's not the only one making changes. I've spoken to architects across Australia who have moved into the business of creating neurodivergent friendly interiors.

Back in the playroom, 11-year-old Evan is in his customized swing, relaxing and playing with a Rubik's Cube.

Done.

That was just about twenty seconds I reckon. That was impressive. And when you get home to your own place and y these rooms with your swing and your big cushion, how does that feel?

It feels like that I can wind down. And actually based on

I like things.

That report was from Louise Mylin, and you can hear more about supporting people with ADHD on people fixing the world wherever you get your BBC podcast.

That's the sound of the Indian skimmer, a unique orange billed water bird native to South Asia. Skimmers tend to lay their eggs on sandbanks in the middle of rivers or other bodies of water. The Chambao River Central and Northern India is one of the foremost breeding habitats for the sky. But for years, their population along the Chambao has been in steady decline. It's a mystery that Parvine Sheikh, a scientist with the Bombay Natural History Society, decided to investigate.

It's a very beautiful, popular bird, but we didn't know what exactly is the problem for them by their declining.

Barving discovered that changing water levels were leaving the skimmers' nests vulnerable to predators.

So these birds mainly nest directly on the sandbars that emerge in between of rivers during peak summers. The water which is surrounded on the sandbar is a natural protection to them. But I realize that rivers have changed and this sandbar starts getting connected to the bank when the water level decreases. And that led to free-ranging dogs that access the sandbars and predate on the eggs. And that was a very sad scenario to see because a very large loss of eggs and chicks were happening.

Parvine decided that she wanted to do something to help protect the skimmer population. She realized that simply guarding their nesting area had a huge impact.

We were monitoring approximately more than, you know, ten, fifteen nest on one island. There were a couple of days left for the chicks to hatch out. When we walked on the nesting sandbar to do the daily monitoring, we realized that the birds were very disturbed. And we saw that a couple of dogs had predated everything, except only the last remaining two eggs.

Parfine and her team decided to engage local communities in the project, employing them as nest guardians.

We experimented it with a couple of nesting sites where we appointed the local community members. We trained them and we told them to protect this nesting colony. And to our surprise, uh more than sixty percent of the chicks successfully flesh from this nesting colony.

Now, Parving's team supports over thirty nest guardians, who provide round the clock protection for skimmer nesting areas. Thanks to their work, the skimmer population on the Chambao has more than doubled.

It's a win-win for the community staying on the bank of the river because they are getting seasonal employment, as well as a win-win for the species that they are getting protection from the people on the bank of the river. Conservation is challenging, uh, but believe it in yourself, believe it in your program. And uh the one thing that we have learned that uh people need to be part of conservation. It's very important that the communities around this species need to be part of the conservation.

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That report was from Branka Lesserdisar.

We are trying to make the UK and Northern Ireland in particular better for for nature and for people. We believe that woodlands provide a lot of health and well being benefits. For people um but also the nature benefits as well, you know, in terms of carbon capture, climate resilience, a clear kind of nature based solution to some of the climate nature crisis we find ourselves in at the moment.

It's one of the UK and Ireland's most threatened habitats. John Martin also explained why this work is important.

Temperate rainforest occurs in areas of high rainfall, mild temperatures and strong kind of ocean influence. It's usually characterized by native tree species. such as oak, birch, alder and hazel and complex woodland structures, including like ravines, rivers, rocky outcrops, etcetera. And although kind of less visually dramatic than tropical rainforests, these systems support extraordinarily specialized and often like globally rare species of flora and faunas, woodland creation.

Almost thirty thousand native trees have been planted in the forty one acre site. That's around twenty five football pitches. It will take about a year to see the tips of the trees sprouting up through their protective plastic tubes, but it will be at least a hundred years before they're fully grown. Rosemary Mole Holland is part of the Ulster Wildlife team who are running this restoration.

Over the years these trees will grow and it's good to know that I was there at the start. It's a great privilege to take this land and turn it into a habitat that is now largely lost. You know, we would have had a lot of this forest all over Ireland at one time. It's a very rare habitat. It's actually rarer than tropical rainforests. But it'll do a great job as well as supporting wildlife. It will reduce runoff of water, you know, reduce risk of flooding, and it will be open to people.

John Martin and Rosemary Mulholland

And that's all from the Happy Pod for now. We'd love to hear from you. As ever, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was produced by Rachel Bolkeley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Holly Gibbs. Until next time, goodbye.