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From Our Own Correspondent

Lockdown in China

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hundreds of foreign nationals are being evacuated from Wuhan, the centre of China's coronavirus outbreak, as more deaths and cases are confirmed. British citizens being flown back to the UK from the city will be put in quarantine for two weeks. Stephen McDonnell was recently in Hubei province where the disease was first identified and is now back in Beijing. He too has been told to stay at home for a fortnight and he reflects on how even the Chinese capital feels eerily deserted. This month, Colombia’s war crimes tribunal, the court which was created as part of the 2016 peace deal between the government and the left wing guerrillas known as the FARC or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, began hearing testimony about the illegal recruitment of children and teenagers. The FARC denies that it ever forced underage soldiers to fight. But the Prosecutor General’s office says the guerrillas recruited more than 5,000 minors during the decades long conflict. Matthew Charles visited one of the worst affected communities in the eastern province of Vaupes . It’s been a year since a dam at a mine in Brazil collapsed, killing 270 people. The dam, near Brumadinho in the province of Minas Gerais was owned by the mining company Vale - and just last week 11 of its employees, including its former President, were charged with murder over the incident. While investigations into how it collapsed and who’s to blame continue, the community next to the iron ore mine is struggling to pick up the pieces. Katy Watson returned to speak to survivors. The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has just moved from Germany to the UK. In 2015 he was released from house arrest and to much fanfare arrived in Berlin. Berliners were thrilled to give refuge to such a global star. And Ai Weiwei said he loved Germany. But since then the mutual admiration has faded: Ai Weiwei has given a series of interviews in which he’s said he’s leaving Berlin in part because Germans are rude, racist and authoritarian. In Germany that has sparked outrage and some soul searching. Damien McGuinness wonders whether Germans really are impolite or simply misunderstood. New York's health care system is often accused of being expensive and labyrinthine. Yet a visit to two hospitals in Brooklyn and Manhattan left Laura Trevelyan feeling curiously uplifted, despite the physical pain, and the bureaucracy of US healthcare. On her odyssey through the emergency rooms, she made some new friends while guided by an old one.

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:05.0

Today, a lost childhood, a lost generation in Colombia, we meet the teenagers who were snatched from their homes to fight a guerrilla war.

0:15.0

Berlin has always had a lively art scene, but we find it's no place for the faint-hearted.

0:20.8

A year on from a fatal dam- in Brazil and lives are slowly being rebuilt.

0:27.0

And in New York, popping into a hospital, our correspondent has something of an odyssey through the health care system.

0:34.0

First lockdown, quarantine, emergency evacuation,

0:40.0

all the frightening terms which attach to the outbreak of a hitherto unknown virus,

0:45.2

coronavirus. It's spreading in China and has already put its feelers into several other countries.

0:52.3

Its epicenter, Wu Han, is in Hubay province, and our

0:56.8

correspondent Stephen McDonnell reflects on the atmosphere it's creating.

1:02.6

We arrive in Hernan province, on board an almost empty train.

1:06.4

Who'd want to head into a virus hot zone.

1:08.8

People are going in the other direction.

1:10.7

The small city of Nagnan isn't far from the border with Hube, the heart of the virus

1:15.0

emergency and here we hire a car. We need number plates from anywhere but Hube province.

1:21.6

That's why we start our journey here. Cars from Hubay are like an open

1:25.5

declaration that the vehicle could be carrying the coronavirus. As we approach the border,

1:31.0

there are checks. You drive up to a roadblock where masks

1:34.0

police wave over all cars to stop. Medical teams covered head-to-toe in

1:39.0

protective clothing use electronic thermometers to scan all passengers.

1:43.0

They're wearing goggles because scientists have warned

1:46.0

that having exposed eyes could be a way of contracting the potentially deadly disease.

...

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