Surgery in a backpack

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In some places, the nearest safe operating room can be hours or even days away. We find out about a portable operating theatre called SurgiBox that fits in a backpack and inflates in minutes, creating a safe surgical environment for operations almost anywhere. We meet the co-founder of the start-up behind it and see it put to the test, and speak to a surgeon who has used it to save lives far from a hospital. We also hear from Field Ready, whose engineers in Syria are using 3D printing to bring broken hospital equipment back to life, and we hear about Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms — grassroots command centres where volunteers coordinate life-saving help and vital information in the midst of war.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.5	Hello and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
0:10.5	I'm Myra Anubi and I host the People Fixing the World podcast, looking at the common challenges around the world and the creative ways people are trying to tackle them, from eating invasive
0:22.9	species as an alternative source of food, to saving endangered animals with radioactive material.
0:30.0	You can listen and subscribe by searching People Fixing the World, wherever you got this podcast.
0:36.7	People Fixing the World.
0:44.0	Welcome to People Fixing the World from the BBC World Service with me, Myra Anubi.
0:51.1	This is the program that looks for solutions to some of the world's toughest problems,
0:55.8	like the impact of war. Today we'll hear about innovative ways to get people the medical help
1:01.6	and support that they need when their lives are turned upside down.
1:08.5	2 billion. That's the number of people that are estimated to be living in areas affected by conflict, according to the UN.
1:16.9	Now, that's a quarter of the world's population. And when fighting starts, a lot of lives are lost, and crucially, governments are torn apart.
1:25.8	Conflict can shut down hospitals, cut off power and water, leaving
1:30.4	communities without even the most basic healthcare. But on people fixing the world, we are all about
1:37.1	solutions. In Sudan, we'll find out how communities have created their own emergency response networks,
1:43.7	and in Syria, we'll find out
1:45.5	how broken hospital equipment is cleverly being repaired. But first, let's talk about an
1:51.5	innovation that could revolutionise surgery during war. Our reporter, Craig Langran, went to find out
1:57.9	how. We're not in a conflict zone. We're in rural Switzerland,
2:02.6	about 20 minutes from the city of Lozanne.
2:06.6	There are trees on all sides.
2:08.3	There's just nature, really, for as far as the eye can see.
	...

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