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Inside Health

Covid-19 drug trial; Mental health alone; Southampton update; Antarctica's lockdown lessons

Inside Health

BBC

Health & Fitness, Science

4.4575 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A range of potential treatments have been suggested for Covid-19 but nobody knows if any of them will turn out to be more effective in helping people recover than the usual standard hospital care which all patients will receive. Inside Health regular Dr Margaret McCartney talks to Claudia about how the first randomised trials are now setting out to test some of these suggested treatments with unprecedented speed and adaptability as potential new drug candidates emerge.

During lockdown some find their mental health is put at higher risk. Katie Connebear is a mental health campaigner and blogger who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder eight years ago. She has experienced psychotic episodes and has coping strategies in place for when she feels her mental health deteriorating. She offers her thoughts on how to make small progressive steps in the absence of family and friends who she normally relies on when times are difficult.

We’ve the latest in Inside Health’s regular visits to test the temperature at Southampton General Hospital. During the current pandemic maternity wards have to make sure that the birth of babies happens in a way that keeps expectant mothers, their birth partners and staff safe from the virus. Government advice includes pregnant women in the “vulnerable group" who need to take extra steps to socially distance, with extra attention after 28 weeks. Consultant obstetrician Jo Mountfield is keen to allay pregnant women’s concerns.

And with isolation set to continue, we can also learn from people who have lived in a different kind of lockdown – and one that was in many ways more extreme. Beth Healey is an intensive care doctor currently working in Switzerland who spent 14 months at Concordia research station in the Antarctic, investigating how the team coped with living in such an isolated environment She reveals the similarities in life there and life under lockdown here.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Rihalina. I'm excited. You're dead to me. The comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Hello, I hope you're okay in these strange times. I said at the start of this series that we're combining the expertise of inside health and all in the mind.

0:41.8

And this week we're looking a little deeper into the mind and asking what life is like under lockdown

0:47.3

if you have a mental health problem and none of your usual coping strategies are open to you at the moment.

0:53.2

And what can we learn from the scientists

0:55.1

accustomed to their own kind of lockdown in Antarctic research stations when small things

1:00.7

can get out of proportion? We actually ran out of paper napkins in Antarctica and this became

1:06.6

like a massive issue for a lot of crew members. I remember spending like a whole afternoon

1:10.5

with everyone discussing what we were going to do and people getting really quite upset about it.

1:14.4

And then you like Skype home to your friend and she says like, Beth, this is not a problem.

1:18.4

And you know, it suddenly puts everything into perspective as well.

1:21.2

And Beth will have tips for the rest of us on how to live in harmony under lockdown.

1:25.8

Plus the latest from Southampton General Hospital too.

1:29.1

How are they caring for pregnant women in these difficult circumstances? Before all that, I'm

1:34.1

joined by our resident scrutineer of the evidence GP Margaret McCartney. Now Margaret, one of the

1:39.2

things that everyone is hoping for is a drug to treat the symptoms of COVID-19 and hopefully to save lives.

1:45.5

Now, various trials are already underway and these have been set up very fast, haven't they?

1:50.7

Yes, it is really pretty spectacular, to be honest. I think after the swine flu pandemic,

1:56.2

there was a realization that there hadn't been enough high-quality trials so that we would

2:00.6

end up knowing more

2:01.6

about the best treatments than at the beginning. And I think that has really been taken on board here,

2:06.3

and I'm delighted that there are randomised controlled trials up and running already within the COVID-19

2:12.1

pandemic, which is just fantastic. As you rightly say, usually clinical trials take years to set up, but so much of the

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