Hundreds missing after Nepal floods

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez and we're going to begin straight away today in Nepal where hundreds of people, many of them foreign tourists on trekking holidays, are missing. That's after a flash flood swept down from across the border in China, destroying almost everything in its path. Images from the aftermath, and some of them are up on our website right now, show a swathe of water and mud engulfing entire villages in its path. It's also said to have destroyed the main border crossing into Tibet in China. The authorities there are also reporting a large number of casualties.

1:10The Nepali authorities for their part have confirmed at least 31 dead, although that number is going up all the time. Well, these people in Nepal's Nuwakot district saw what happened there. My brother-in-law had a liquor store here. I got a call from him this morning and they were crying and said their entire house had been swept away. Three family members were rescued, but his brother is still missing. I saw around nine trucks being swept away by the floods, including people. It's a heartbreaking incident. I've been teaching here for 18 years and I've never seen anything like this here before.

1:50Raj Gaiwali works in the tourism industry in Nepal. He's in the capital Kathmandu, but was up in the affected area just a couple of months ago. I asked him what he knows. Oh, well, we've been following this right from the morning since it happened around eight o 'clock. And, you know, we're getting in today's day and age, you can get a lot of videos coming in from people on the ground. And we're also getting messages from the government, from the tourism industry. So the machinery is working now. And what can you tell us about the area where this happened close to the border? What sort of place is it?

2:31This is one of the borders that we have with Tibet. It's a crossing border for humans and for goods. It's an incredibly narrow valley. And once it reaches the border, it goes pretty much straight up into the Tibetan plateau. So it goes up all the way to 4 ,000 meters on the top. And this one, the border is quite a huge drop right at the bottom, you know, and it's a river. So it's a very narrow valley. So, you know, it looks like and we don't know yet. It's not confirmed whether it was a glacial lake outburst or it was caused by an avalanche that blocked the river and caused the dam. So it looks like the second one is suspect right now.

3:12But it's not been confirmed yet, at least from the sources that we've been listening to. But the point is, as you say, because it's so narrow, if there is a huge volume of water trying to come down, it hasn't got many places to go. Exactly. So it just wipes out everything on its way. So, you know, this is the exact definition of a flash flood. And the river runs all the way from the border all the way to India. And by now, it's around five o 'clock now in Kathmandu. It has about reached India now, the waters. and the debris and everything that it has brought along from the wiped out small towns along its way are reaching down into India now.

3:56So yeah, it's really tragic and devastating. I mean, there are villages, small townships in the Lantang trekking area that we usually start from, which are completely wiped out, completely. And in terms of visitors to the area, those climbing up? I mean, is this a particularly busy time of year? It is a busy time for people going to Tibet from Nepal and coming back. And the main point where the water came in is exactly at the border from what we have seen, and it hit the immigration point. And so people who are crossing almost for sure have got swept away. I mean, we're now hearing reports of about 383 travellers that are missing currently.

4:46And that includes Nepali as well as Westerners. And what about the rescue effort? I mean, does the government have the resources to do this? I mean, are people involved in the trekking tourism industry? Are they getting involved? I mean, there must be quite a few people with the sort of expertise necessary for this kind of situation. That is true. We're quite used to this because, we live in an area which is incredibly fragile. And so the army immediately deployed. We've got army helicopters in the area. We've got private choppers here. So they immediately deployed. The government immediately declared that choppers don't require permission to fly in that particular area.

5:27Nepal Telecommunications immediately gave free data and free calls in that area. They opened it up. I mean, the home minister was online really fast as a task force and I think a command center that's been set up already. So, I mean, they're doing their stuff. There's no doubt about it. I mean, the machinery is in action. I also read something from the Nepal Mountaineering Association that has made a call out for experts in rescue, swift water, coming from the rafting industry, the mountaineering industry, the long land rescues. So all the experts are gathering, of course. And so, yeah, that's kicked in.

6:08That was Raj Gaiwali speaking to me from Kathmandu. Well, with me in the studio is Navin Singh Khadka, the BBC's global environment correspondent, who is Napoli himself. Good to see you. We've heard a bit about the topography of where this happened, this narrow valley. But what might have caused this flash flood? That's the billion dollar question now. Everybody's asking that and nobody seems to have a definitive answer as of yet. Now, I'm in touch with different glaciologists, hydrologists as well, conflicting theories. Interestingly, the Chinese news agency, government run news agency, Xinhua, has called it mudslide.

6:47Now, that's I think is slightly, you know, it doesn't show the gravity of the situation. Mudslide is seems quite dimmer. So experts are telling me two probable theories here. Either it's a rock ice avalanche that came down from thousands of metres up there and then blocked this river. And then that river got impounded and a dam was built. That dam got bridged. And all of a sudden, there's this massive flood. That's one theory. The other theory is it could also be, you know, some glacial lakes might have been involved. Just to quickly remind you, this was the same region where we saw a similar flood, not of this scale, you know, but there was a flood around this area.

7:30And back then, they had found that there were some glacier lakes underground. They're called thermocast glacier lakes. They're underground. They burst out, came up on the surface and then burst out. But then again, like what I'm being told by experts is because of this, this is monsoon now. There are so many clouds hovering around. and therefore satellites can't penetrate and therefore they cannot get the exact picture. But we are waiting for that answer. There was some suggestion from the Nepali government that it might have been an earthquake that triggered this. Does that have any credibility, do you think?

7:59Well, the earthquake has been measured, yes, 4.4. Now, see, the thing is, you know, earthquakes of that scale is quite common in this part of the world. Well, it could be. It could be not. You know, the marriage between climate change and earthquake and all this unstabilised, destabilised mountain, This is quite, quite ugly. Yes, it could have been the case, but we are yet to confirm. The earthquake definitely did take place. The epicentral world is slightly far away from this place, but the tremor must have been felt. Was that the trigger? Was that not? Again, another question. But just briefly, is the worry that this may become increasingly common, these kinds of events, as the climate warms?

8:39Yes, exactly. So the mountains are being destabilised, and what I often say is the cement is missing, cement that keeps our buildings intact. In the same way, the ice, the snow, the permafrost, they keep the mountains intact. Now, when you lose those permafrosts, the ice, the snowfield and all that, what happens is mountains crumble down, mountains are coming down. And when they come down, the medium is the river and rivulets down there. They carry all those boulders and sediments and they become so devastating as we are seeing now. Navin, thank you very much indeed. Navin Zinkaka, the BBC's Global Environment Correspondent, joining us live.

9:13We will, of course, bring you any updates on that story during the course of the programme. We're going to turn to Pakistan now, though, because a fire at one of the country's main hospitals has killed at least 14 newborn babies. The blaze broke out at the Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital, Islamabad. Our correspondent Carrie Davis has been at the hospital and joins us now. Carrie, what seems to have happened? Well, according to the authorities, this is still the early stages, but they suspect that what happened was that there was a spark. There was some form of short circuiting, potentially from an air conditioning unit, as what's been suggested.

9:49And then I spoke to one of the federal ministers who came down to the hospital earlier. He said that the reason that the fire had taken hold so quickly in this particular ward or nursery, as it's often been called, is because there was a lot of oxygen, oxygen pipes and oxygen cylinders in this ward. And he says that was what led to it spread so quickly. He called it a blast, an explosion that had happened and said that the reason why it was difficult to save any of the babies in that ward was because of how quickly the fire had spread. Of course, we know that 14 died. There were 15 in that ward.

10:24So only one baby was able to be brought out alive. I was down there only a few hours after this fire had been contained and the families were still waiting outside. Many of them obviously hugely distressed and upset about what had happened, trying to find some form of answers and asking so many questions about what had gone on in the hospital. What had led to this fire and what had led to the response to the fire. One lady I spoke to told me that at around six o 'clock in the morning, she was just down the way with just a few wards over with her sister-in-law and their new baby, her niece. It was around six o 'clock in the morning.

11:05They heard some shouting and they looked out down the corridor, saw that there was smoke coming from this particular ward. And without doing anything more, they simply picked the baby up and ran and got out of the hospital incredibly quickly. And I think for them, it was almost a chance that they were in one ward and not the other that led them to be able to survive. I think you also spoke to one devastated father. Is that right? Yes, this was one of the many families that were outside. And this man wanted to speak to us about the death of his baby girl.

11:41Yes, she was my baby girl. This happened at 5.30 to 6.30 in the morning. There was a noise, but they didn't let anyone go near that side. The rescue staff came very late. The government machinery, the fire brigade. The fire brigade has come very late. People looked after themselves. Here, my wife had given birth three days ago and was staying in a private room. This happened at six o 'clock in the morning. The baby girl was born three days ago. They should have had better safety measures, and they all arrived very late. Carrie it is an appalling tragedy but that criticism there that the emergency services were apparently slow to arrive and also some complaints about the ward that people couldn't get out tell us a bit more about that yes so firstly on the rescue services when we spoke to people there quite a few people said exactly what that gentleman said that the fire had started at around six o 'clock in the morning the suggestion is that they said that they didn't see the emergency services for over an hour at the site.

12:44Now, that's disputed by the authorities who say that the emergency services came within six minutes of the emergency call being made. So clearly, that will be a major source for the investigation about what happened and how quickly people responded and got there to help. But we did hear from people at the scene who said that They had either got themselves out or other patients had also helped to get them out too. Carrie, I'm sorry to cut you off. We're going to have to leave it there. We're out of time, I'm afraid. That was Carrie Davis, our correspondent, joining us live from Islamabad. You're listening to Nisa.

13:27Still to come on the programme, the impact of Russian attacks on petrol stations near the front line in eastern Ukraine.

13:37Almost all petrol stations here in Donbass have been hit, but some have been partly repaired by operators who try to keep them going so that people can fill up. Everyone knows which petrol stations to go to. I can go get fuel now, be it petrol, diesel or LPG, here in Slovyansk. More on that coming up in half an hour. Our main headlines from the newsroom at the moment. Hundreds of people are missing after that devastating flash flood in northern Nepal. And one other headline this hour, a French court has for the first time recognised breast cancer to be an occupational risk for airline cabin crew.

14:27This is James Menendez with News Out Live from the BBC. We're going to turn to China now and a story that will resonate with parents and teenagers all over the world. how growing pressure to do well in exams is leading some young people to turn to various prescription drugs to help them switch off. Many of the medications are obtained relatively easily and cheaply online. Our China correspondent, Laura Bicker, has been investigating. She's been telling me more. So these are usually drugs that would be prescribed for things like a cough or you'd maybe get them if you had epilepsy and you wanted to prevent seizures.

15:03There's even some drugs that prevent pain, nerve pain in particular. We are not naming these drugs for editorial reasons, but they get them very easily over the internet. They're able to just order them. They arrive at the door. One interviewee told us she just uses her normal ID and at the time when she started, she was 14. And so they know the age of these young people. They put in their ID, they ask for the medicine and it arrives at their door. Now with regards to some of these medications, certainly the Chinese authorities have noticed that this is becoming a particular problem. They've already started to clamp down on some drugs.

15:41So it means it is getting harder for them to get hold of, particularly the cough suppressant and particularly the anti-epileptic drugs. They've really now clamped down on it to a point where you cannot get it without a signed doctor's prescription. but we were still offered it in a chat room for a very cheap price. You've been able to speak to some students who've been taking these things. What sort of impact has it had on their lives? I think one of our main interviewees was a now 16-year-old girl. We're calling her Xiaomei and she was very happy to talk to us about her experiences because she wants others to learn from it.

16:18She said that she first took a kind of cough suppressant, very large doses of it, just to impress a boy who was like, oh, take this, you know, it'll make you feel better. And she said initially it made her feel dizzy, but after a while she started to realise it was helping her relax. It was a way of escaping the pressure of her everyday life. And she wasn't the only one to tell us that. Chat groups were full of this conversation about a way of escape, trying to not just escape the school system, but escape their parents and the pressure that they feel that they're under. the effect that it has on their lives they say they're taking it after major exams to go home and relax but with chalmay eventually she needed more and more and more of them she started taking five she started taking ten she would try to mix the drug she would try another drug and one day she took 50 after the pressure got too much just months before her high school entrance exam she was rushed to hospital and eventually she had to tell her parents now her parents did not react in the way that she expected.

17:18And I think she says that has saved her life because now they can have an open conversation. But when you speak to experts, one of the things they say that is unique to China is, first of all, the pressure that they're under. It's a very isolating life. When it comes to children here, many of them are an only child after decades of a family planning policy that allowed families in this country to only have the one child. That means the social, So the economic expectations of an entire family rest on the shoulders of a teenager. And they feel that they are told to study hard and much of their lives are spent in isolation.

17:53They go to school at seven, they come back, they go straight to after school activities and they're in their bedroom studying really until late. So they spend a lot of time in isolation. And then there's one extra factor that's come into play. And that is the fact that their parents followed a Communist Party script. They worked very hard. They got a job. Now, if you work hard, that job is not guaranteed. Youth unemployment is at a record high. One in five young people in China, in this country, are now struggling to find a job. That means the competition and the pressure is even more fierce. Which is a potential problem, presumably, for the Chinese Communist Party, that people have high expectations.

18:32They may work hard at school, get good results, but their prospects may not be that great. And I think it's one reason why the Communist Party over the last few years has been trying to address these problems for young people. First of all, they've been saying that they need to do more to ease exam anxiety, to ease the homework burden. They're also trying to put more councillors in schools. They have a target to have a councillor in every school by 2030. They're actually on course to meet that. But if you speak to specialists here, they'll tell you that when it comes to kind of a specialist child psychologist, there are very, very few of them in China.

19:12In fact, a study by the British journal The Lancet found there are only 500 child psychologists, trained child psychologists. And that was a study back in 2020 in this entire country. So that shows you the ratio here. And that was our China correspondent, Laura Bicker. Now, a new study suggests that the current vaccine for shingles, called Shingrix, can significantly lower the risk of heart attack and stroke. Shingles is caused by a reactivation of the chickenpox virus, often in later life, and can cause long-lasting nerve pain. Well, the research is published in the journal Nature Medicine. Let's talk to Dr Maxime Take of Oxford University, who led the study and joins us on the line.

19:56Max, very good to have you with us. What did you find then? So what we found is that people who received the shingles vaccine called Shingrix were at a lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease, so that's a thing with stroke and heart attacks in the seven years following the vaccine compared to people who had received the old vaccine against shingles called Zostovacs. Right. And why is that, do you think? Is it the vaccine itself or is it the fact that not getting shingles means that you might have a lower risk of heart disease and stroke? Well, I think the jury is still out about what the mechanism might be.

20:32But the two possibilities is that it might be about one chemical that's part of the vaccine called an adjuvant that stimulates the immune system. Another possibility is that by preventing shingles, we're essentially preventing heart problems because shingles, we know, can be implicated in heart disease. Yeah. And how much lower then is the risk? So we found that the burden of cardiovascular disease was reduced by 9%. What that means is people lived an average of 9 % more times without a cardiovascular disease. And if we looked at just halfway through our follow-up at 3.5 years, we found that there was about a 12 % reduction in the total number of people who had received a cardiovascular disease diagnosis.

21:16And this was a pretty wide-ranging study. What, I mean, tens of thousands of people, is that right? That's correct. It's a study led by us, but conducted with data from the USA and looked at looking at 7 ,000, 70 ,000 people. Yeah. So what are the implications then? I mean, is it I mean, is it that everyone should be offered this vaccine? So the vaccine currently is offered in many countries for older people. We still need and our study was limited to people who are older, so over the age of 60. So we need to confirm those findings with a clinical trial. And there's one underway in Denmark. But if they are confirmed, the implications could be enormous because cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide.

22:00It kills one in three people and needs to 20 million deaths worldwide every year. Yeah, OK. So that's the primary concern. And I mean, I think in this country it's offered what for people of age 65 and over. I mean, do you think it's possible then that it might be something that should be offered at a lower age? Well, if we are able to show that the vaccine indeed prevents cardiovascular disease, even in younger people, then certainly there would be a case to be made. But we need to be cautious about getting over ourselves. And we need to do the clinical trials and make sure that we can confirm those findings before we make any new recommendations.

22:40OK, we shall await the results of those clinical trials. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. That was Dr. Maxime Take of Oxford University who led that study into the impact of that shingles vaccine into lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke. You're listening to NewsHour. Just a reminder that there is lots more on our top story today, that flash flood in Nepal. Hundreds of people are missing. There is a live page up and running on our website, bbc.com forward slash news. There is also much more to come in the second half of the programme. Do stay with us. Thank you.

23:48Welcome back to News Hour. Now at least a quarter of former NFL players who died from 2016 to 2021 had a progressive neurological disease caused by repeated impacts to the head. It's called CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. This is according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. Researchers examined samples of the brains from more than 800 players who'd appeared in the NFL and died during that period. The NFL Players Association has called the study a sobering reminder that football carries real risks. Well, earlier my colleague Isaac Fannin spoke to Randy Grimes, a former NFL player, about what needs to be done to prevent it for the next generation.

24:30Well, I think you've got to educate parents. You've got to educate coaches at the lower levels. You've got to teach them what to look for and really monitor these kids and the amount of blows that they're having. You know, I played back in an era where we used to beat the heck out of each other all week long. I call it that Bear Bryant mentality where coaches always thought, if you don't practice hard, you're not going to play hard. But, you know, things have changed now and practices aren't what they used to be. There's not as much contact as there used to be. That's a good first start. It's important that we educate these high school and college coaches and parents.

25:12Parents have to know what their kids are getting into. Not that it's going to change anything because, you know, there's a lot of pride and ego there. Guys are not going to raise their hand and ask for help if they do have some symptoms. But we've got to educate them so they can make the best decisions. Do you think the sport can be played safely? No. No, I think football is football. It's going to always be what it is. I think there's some things you might can do that can make it a little safer. I mean, I know that they've improved the equipment, the headgear and all that. But you know what? It doesn't stop the brain from slapping up against the inside of the skull.

25:49And that's where the damage is being done. Football is going to always be football. You know, if guys are going to be like me, you know, knowing what I know now, you know, I hadn't played since 93. But knowing what I know now, I'd go back and do it all over again. I mean, I love the game that much. And it's also, there's a lot of pride and ego that keeps these guys from raising their hand. I know you started your own foundation kind of trying to help former players like yourself. What's the next step, do you think? Continued education. You know, the more that we talk about this, it's kind of like substance abuse.

26:25You know, the more we talk about it, the easier it is for people to raise their hand and ask for help. It kind of removes the stigma. So it's the same thing with CTE. You know, the more we talk about it, the more we educate people, then easier it's going to be for these guys to raise their hands or these families to raise their hands and ask for help because they're the ones that are noticing all the symptoms and they're the ones suffering through this. The beautiful thing about all this is that we're finally talking about it. We weren't talking about it earlier in the last 12 months, but now we are because of this study that's come out.