Global News Podcast - Four countries boycott Eurovision over Israel's inclusion
Episode Date: December 5, 2025The Eurovision Song Contest has been thrown into turmoil after four nations said they would boycott next year's event. Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia had wanted Israel to be excluded bec...ause of the war in Gaza, but a meeting of the European Broadcasting Union said it could take part. Other countries, including Germany, had threatened to walk out if Israel could not participate. Also: A prominent Palestinian militia leader and Hamas opponent has been killed in Gaza. The US military says it conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics as questions mount over the legality of previous attacks. Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo sign a peace deal in Washington. A British inquiry has found that Vladimir Putin bears "moral responsibility" for the poisoning of a woman in England with the nerve agent Novichok in 2018. And how a volcanic eruption may have helped spread the Black Death in the 1300s.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.uk
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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Celia Hatton and in the early hours of Friday the 5th of December, these are our main stories.
Several countries have pulled out of next year's Eurovision song contest after it was confirmed that Israel could participate.
A prominent Palestinian militia leader and Hamas opponent has been killed in Gaza.
Members of the U.S. Congress have reviewed classified video of a strike on an alleged drugboat
which killed two shipwrecked men.
Also in this podcast, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo sign a peace deal in Washington and
there are estimates which suggest that there are about 200 people dying every hour globally because of these type of infections.
Why a hospital in Britain is telling people.
not to wash their hands.
We begin with the controversy
around one of the world's biggest annual television events,
the Eurovision Song Contest.
Four countries have pulled out of next year's competition
after organizers decided that Israel will participate,
despite calls for it to be excluded because of the war in Gaza.
The boycotters are Ireland, the Netherlands,
Slovenia and Spain, which is one of the event's top funders.
Eurovision is a musical extravaganza known for its glitz and glam.
But increasingly, it's becoming deeply political.
While the competition's slogan is united by music,
the dispute over Israel's participation appears to be tearing it apart.
Here's Eurovision expert, Dean Wulich.
It's a historic moment for the European Broadcasting Union.
This is certainly one of the most serious crises that the organisation has ever faced next year.
We're going to see the biggest political boycott of Eurovision ever.
The decision by the four broadcasters came after a meeting of the organiser, the EBU,
when a majority of its members agree to tighten public voting rules,
but not to hold a vote on Israel's participation,
meaning its entry is still welcome next year when the competition turns 70.
Natalia Gorshach is the head of the Slovenian public broadcaster, which decided to pull out.
If we excluded Russia, like one week after they attacked Ukraine, I think the same rules should be applied also to Israel.
You have two years of complete destruction of one territory.
While Israel has welcomed its continued inclusion, the 1998 Israeli winner Donna International denounce the four boys.
recording broadcasters and said their decision was violent and insulting.
Ilan Zoller is an Israeli journalist focused on Eurovision.
I'm very happy because I think Israel should be in Eurovision.
It's important.
Israel is one of the best countries of Eurovision.
We're sending big songs almost year after year.
Personally, I think there's no place for politics.
Everyone should put politics aside.
It's a competition between broadcasters.
and I'm very happy, but I'm a bit sad
because my favourite countries are usually the Netherlands in Spain
and they withdrawn, so yeah.
Janat Jalil got more details from our music correspondent Mark Savage.
Tensions over Israel's participation in the Eurovision song contest
have been festering for two years now,
ever since they responded to the deadly 7th of October Hamas attack
by invading Gaza.
And of course, as the death toll has risen,
those protests have become more and more vociferous.
Today, in Geneva, there was a meeting of all of the member states
who take part in the Eurovision Song Contest,
and some of them were pushing for a vote on whether or not Israel
would be allowed to participate next year.
Now, in the end, the organizers did not allow that vote to go ahead.
Instead, they pressed for a vote where people would ratify
a package of measures that will make the public vote
for the Eurovision Song Contest.
people phone and texting slightly tighter to avoid outside influence to counter-accusations that
there had been government campaigns to get people to vote for certain acts across Europe. Tied
to that vote was the idea or an agreement that they would not press ahead with a vote on Israel's
exclusion. So when that motion passed, Israel sailed through to next year's contest and immediately
four countries pulled out. And the speed with which they issued their press releases suggests that
they were prepared for this eventuality early on.
Yes, so emotions riding high here.
There had been questions about whether the Israeli government had influenced the public vote
given that the Israeli entry came top in that public vote.
That's correct.
And that's what they were talking about there.
There was a campaign that was funded by the Israeli government to advertise Israel's entry
on YouTube, on social media.
And there was even a post on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Instagram account
advising people outside of Israel how they could vote for the act.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the scales were tipped in Israel's favour.
It was a very popular song going into the contest,
but some eyebrows were raised at how big that campaign was.
So how big a crisis is this for the Eurovision Song Contest?
Can these divisions be healed?
I think if you look at what the Spanish delegation said going into this meeting today,
it feels like the rift is very, very deep and very wide.
They said they had lost faith in the management of the Eurovision Song Contest
that today's meeting should never have been necessary in the first place.
And they look at examples like Russia being kicked out of the contest after it invaded Ukraine
and are asking why that hasn't happened in this case.
Now, the EBU does have an answer to that.
It says that Russia's state broadcaster had contravened the terms and conditions of its membership.
It was more about following rules and policies than it was about the actions of the Russian government.
They say that Israel's broadcaster Cannes has been compliant with all the rules.
And also, there's a sense in which many countries want to protect press freedom in Israel
because Cannes is an organisation that has sometimes been at loggerheads with the Netanyahu administration.
And there was a fear that if they were kicked out of the contest,
then that would mean there would be a cut in funding.
tighter controls over its output.
Mark Savage. Let's turn to the latest from Gaza,
where a prominent Palestinian militia leader who opposed Hamas has been killed,
Yasser Abu Shabab was a Bedouin tribal chief
who led a group operating an Israeli-controlled territory
near the southern city of Rafa.
Hamas had accused him of collaborating with Israel.
He'd been one of several men jostling for power as the region prepares
for the second phase of the U.S. ceasefire plan.
His militia, the popular forces, said he was shot
while trying to resolve a family dispute.
But Venetia Mingus, a journalist with the Times of London,
who recently interviewed Yasser Abu Shab,
says there are reports that he may have been assassinated.
Yasser Abu Shabab was a 35-year-old smuggler
from Rafa in southern Gaza,
who at the start of the war in Gaza was in a Hamas prison
on drug trafficking charges. So quite an unlikely figure to end up leading a militia.
However, in May last year, he emerged as leader of what he called the Popular Forces.
He declared the group to be an anti-Hamas militia working towards a terrorism-free future for the
strip. But it is worth noting he never really had the support of Gazans civilians,
even though many are anti-Hamas, as he's seen as a collaborator with Israel.
Now, when I interviewed him, he denied this, although it is clear he's been working with Israel as he has been operating under their areas of control.
And he said that he was funded and supported by powerful members of the Tarabin tribe, who are a Bedouin tribe, which stretch from Egypt to the UAE.
And he said they provided the weapons and the money to keep their group going.
So a lot is left to be verified regarding the circumstances of his circumstances.
death. However, I spoke with Israeli sources today who have coordinated with him and they said,
it is indeed true. He has been killed. I believe the most likely theory is that his group was
infiltrated by Hamas, who then used their access to attack the group and capture members of his
group. We know that his death occurred in the area under his control in Rafa, which is beyond
the yellow line. So it's in an area controlled by the Israelis. So that makes this quite.
significant as he was Hamas's number one target and was assassinated within the Israeli area
of control. And this definitely undermines their image of dominance and leaves the other
anti-Hamas militias within their area, fearing that the Israelis cannot protect them.
Venetia Mingus. Two elsewhere in the Gaza Strip now, Gaza City in the North, where Palestinians
have begun initial work despite a lack of construction materials on restoring two cultural
heritage sites destroyed by Israel during the war. The hope is that ultimately they can rebuild
the Great Amari Mosque, the oldest mosque in the territory, and the historic Pasha's Palace.
International journalists are not allowed to report freely inside Gaza, so Yulanel is following
their progress from Jerusalem.
With pickaxes and wheelbarrows, dozens of Palestinian workers are clearing rubble.
from the ruins of the medieval great Omari Mosque in Gaza City.
Its distinctive octagonal minaret is now just a broken stump.
The Israeli military says it bombed what it called a tunnel shaft
and terror tunnel during the war against Hamas.
Since the Gaza ceasefire, works begun to clear and sort the stones.
But Israel isn't yet allowing building materials to enter Gaza,
and that limits what can be done, says Hosni Amas-Lum,
an engineer from Rewak, a local cult.
cultural heritage organization.
The challenges we face are, first of all, scarcity of resources, iron and construction materials.
Then we're using primitive tools and being very careful because the stones here are 12 or 1300 years old.
Nearby in the old city, another Palestinian team is taking away buckets of rubble from what's left
of the Pasha's palace, exposing the mosaic floor.
Gaza's history stretches back some 5,000 years.
The palace was originally an historic fort,
where it said Napoleon stayed in 1799.
The Israeli military told me it had no information
about why it targeted this site in the war.
Dr. Hamuda Adda, who's in charge of the cleanup,
says Palestinians cared deeply about their heritage.
We are dealing with a building
that expresses the identity and memory of the Palestinian people.
We are determined to preserve what's left of this important landmark.
UNESCO's verified damage to 145 religious, historic and cultural sites since the start of the war,
including Roman cemeteries, the ruins of early churches, and an ancient Greek port.
It will be a long time before any meaningful restoration can take place.
But the start of work marks a step forwards.
Yolandnell.
To the U.S. now, where the defense secretary Pete Hegseth is facing sustained political pressure.
Much of it centers around his involvement in a September attack on what the U.S. says was a drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean.
After the initial hit on the boat, two survivors left clinging to wreckage were killed in a follow-on strike.
The White House, as already said Mr. Hegseth authorized the attacks but did not.
give the order to kill. To clarify exactly what happened, the man in command of the operation,
Admiral Frank Bradley, has shown a select group of U.S. lawmakers, an unedited video of the incident.
Admiral Bradley has also backed up the Trump administration's account, saying that he was the one
who ordered the second strike on the boat. After the briefing, a visibly upset Democrat congressman,
Jim Himes, told the media that he was horrified by what he'd seen.
What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service.
You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion with a destroyed vessel who were killed by the United States.
But the Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who also watched the footage, said he'd seen nothing illegal and called them righteous strikes.
He also gave perhaps the most detailed description yet of what appears to have happened.
I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs, down for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight.
And potentially, given all the context we heard, of other narco-terrorist boats in the area coming to their aid to recover their cargo and recover those narco-terrorists.
So what exactly did lawmakers see and hear?
in this briefing. Our North America correspondent is Peter Bowes.
This was a closed-door meeting for members of Congress from both the House of Representatives
and the Senate, high-ranking members from the relevant committees, so the Armed Services Committee,
the Senate Intelligence Committee, they were shown classified, unedited video footage of the
strikes, which happened on September 2nd. This is the strike that involved the two survivors
attempting to climb back onto the boat. And the briefing includes,
a review of the boat's condition, the presence of drugs, the threat assessment that is said
to have justified this continued military action. And the members were able to ask questions
about the timeline, the legality, and the operational decisions that were made during this
incident. So are we closer to clearing up the confusion about what happened with this strike
in September and who ordered it? Well, that appears to have been the main purpose of the
briefing. The lawmakers heard from Admiral Frank Bradley, who explained his reasoning for ordering
the second strike, and he said that he acted within his authority, that he made the decision,
not the Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. We know from an interview that Mr. Hegseth gave a couple of
days ago that he claims to have watched the first strike live, presumably by remote video,
but he said he didn't see the survivors and was informed afterwards that the Admiral chose to
sink the boat and eliminate the threat.
Can you tell us more about what Admiral Bradley said? Did he give any reason for the second strike?
Admiral Bradley and the White House indeed say the strikes were lawful because the survivors were still
considered a legitimate target. So that gets to the crux of his reasoning. But some lawmakers,
particularly Democrats, who are very concerned about the rules of engagement, as they've been
explained to them during this briefing. So, Peter, what's the bigger picture then when it comes to
future US strikes? Not long ago, we heard about another US attack on a boat. What are the
details on that? And what does it tell us? Well, yes, the US military has conducted, they say,
another of these deadly strikes on an alleged drug smuggling boat killing four. We don't have
many more details on that just yet. But of course, the September 2nd,
was the first of a long series of these kinds of strikes that have killed more than 80 people so far.
So there are no signs that this is going to end.
However, interestingly, a couple of days ago, during a cabinet meeting, President Trump,
said that there were now very few boats travelling on the water,
including fishing boats and other vessels, which is a claim where he is suggesting that there is evidence
that these strikes have drastically reduced this maritime activity
and have therefore justified the action.
Peter Bowes.
Still to come in this podcast,
the mysteries of a medieval pandemic.
They have this coincidence that the only region they import their grain from
happens to be infected already by plague.
Why a volcano may be to blame for the spread of black death.
Companies have more access to their data than ever before.
So why is it still so difficult to use it to drive decisions?
I'm Chip Kleinexel, host of Resilient Edge,
a business vitality podcast paid and presented by Deloitte.
The easy answer is everybody thinks it's about data volume or complexity,
but really, Chip, it's about the strategy, culture, and governance.
Sam Suresh from Deloitte sees this pattern everywhere.
Data swamps that suck you in to the nitty-gritty
instead of guiding executive decision-making with precision.
And another challenge, an old tech principle
that is as relevant as ever today.
Garbage in, garbage out, right?
It's a very unfortunate reason why that principle
has continued to stand the test of time.
I think in the age of AI, I will double down on that
and say garbage in, is garbage out square.
That's Satya Jidev from SkyWorks Solutions.
Garbage Out Squared is about how AI amplifies bad data exponentially.
Not everyone's getting sucked in, though.
Companies that are winning are turning data into a competitive advantage.
These are the organizations that treat data as a core business asset instead of a technical
byproduct.
And that requires a mindset shift.
What separates companies that turn data into profit from those in what Sam calls POC
purgatory?
The full episode is now available on the Resilient Edge Feed.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
It's 5.23 p.m.
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Another is building a fort out of your clean laundry.
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A peace deal has been signed between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The ceremony in Washington was presided over by the U.S. President Donald Trump,
whose administration helped broker the agreement.
The compact was signed.
today, which will be known as the Washington Accords, everybody sort of like that name,
formalizes the terms agreed to in June, including a permanent ceasefire, the disarmament of
non-state forces, provisions for refugees to return to their homes, and justice and accountability
for those who have committed illegal atrocities.
This could mark a turning point for the two African countries, which have been at odds for
decades. Tension spiked earlier this year when the armed rebel group, the M23, believed to be
backed by Rwanda, seized Goma, a city in the DRC. But at the signing, Rwandan President Paul
Kagami and DRC President Felix Chisakady sounded cautiously hopeful the fighting would stop.
It's up to us in Africa, working with our partners to consolidate and expand this piece.
There will be ups and downs on the road ahead.
There is no doubt about it.
Rwanda.
I know.
We'll not be found wanting.
I want to believe that this day marks the beginning of a new way.
I want to believe that this day marks the beginning of a new path.
A demanding path, certainly difficult, but a path where peace is no longer just a way.
wish, but a goal. The Democratic Republic of Congo will fully play its part with dignity,
with awareness and consistency, and with the support of its partners. We remain vigilant but not pessimistic,
clear-eyed, but resolutely optimistic. The deal negotiated by the Trump administration includes
economic incentives for both Rwanda and the DRC, and plans for U.S. companies to mine some of the
DRC's valuable minerals. But will it secure a lasting peace? A question for our Africa correspondent,
Shinganyoka. Many people who have been following this conflict for over the last 30 years
agree that it is an important step. The United Nations, for example, has said that it's an
opportunity to turn the page. Many would say that the escalation that had happened at the start of
the year when the rebel forces, the M23, had taken over vast swathes of the eastern part
of the country, and they were threatening to move on Kinshasa in really statements that
would have destabilized the country as a whole, that when the U.S. stepped in to offer this
mediation role, that that halted the progression of the M23.
But what we've seen over the last week or so is that just days before, you know,
this peace agreement has signed between the two leaders that they've been trading insults on both
sides in the sense that the Congolese army has accused the M23 of taking over certain villages
and the M23 has accused the Congolese government of bombing, of carrying out air raids
and trying to sabotage this peace deal. Over the last 30 years or so of this conflict,
there have been many, many attempts at mediation, at dialogue.
There has been military intervention by the African countries,
the regional countries that surround both countries as well as the African Union.
And all of those deals have fallen apart.
I think there is optimism in the sense that many are hoping that President Trump
might be able to exert pressure by threatening sanctions on the leaders
if they do fail to adhere to these commitments.
But I think it's also important to note that this peace deal is being signed by the Congolese government as well as the Rwandese government, whereas the M23 is neither of those, even though it's backed by Rwanda.
So, you know, the main fighting force in the eastern part of the country is not party to this peace deal.
There's a separate parallel process that's being mediated by the Qatari government.
but it's a very kind of haphazard approach to peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Shingai Nyoka.
Here in the UK, a public inquiry has found the Russian leader of Vladimir Putin
bears moral responsibility for the poisoning death of a British woman
near the city of Salisbury in 2018.
Don Sturgis died from exposure to the chemical Novichok,
which had been used by Russian agents targeting the four.
former spy Sergei Scripal. He and his daughter, Yulia, fell seriously ill but survived the attack.
The UK's Prime Minister, Sir Kier Starmer, said the report was a grave reminder of the Kremlin's
reckless aggression and disregard for innocent lives. The Russian Foreign Ministry has rejected
the findings, calling them tasteless fairy tales. The BBC's Tom Simons told Janat Jalil more about
the case.
Sergei Skrippel and Yulia Scrippel had picked up the Novichuk.
which had been smeared on the door handle of their house in Salisbury,
they had been taken ill in the town centre,
and quickly, within a few days,
it became clear it was the use of a nerve agent.
And then fast forward some months later,
and I think the months are quite interesting,
because what happens is the three GRU officers
have a fake bottle of perfume that they've carried this Novichok around in.
They have dumped it somewhere in Salisbury,
and it's been picked up by Charlie Rowley,
who's the partner of Dawn Sturge.
he appears to have kept it for some months and then given it to us a present and she rubbed it on
herself and on her wrist on her wrist and then probably smelt it as well and was taken ill and
you know very very quickly was unsavable despite the care that she was given by and it was
praised in this report so you have this awful incident where a normal 44 year old
English woman is caught up in a global espionage plot and an another
is quite an astounding thing to even say out loud.
And it later emerged that the Novichok in this perfume bottle
could have potentially killed thousands of people.
So tell us what this report has found today.
What is it saying today?
It has said that, contrary to what has been claimed in some places
that this is some kind of fake attack,
perhaps carried out by the British to make Russia look bad,
no evidence of that,
that it was carried out by these three GRU intelligence officers,
as the Metropolitan Police found,
that they would not have done this
without it being signed off by superior officers,
that they did it fairly recklessly,
almost without trying to not be caught.
I mean, they didn't hide their faces on CCTV or anything like that.
And therefore it was clear this was an attempt to shock everybody
about what Russia could do,
and that none of that would have happened
without the knowledge of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
And so the blame, the moral blame for this,
is laid firmly at his feet by the inquiry.
chairman. And the big question for a lot of people will be, what lessons can be learnt to prevent
another such attack? Because it isn't the first time that there's been a nerve agent poisoning
in Britain. Well, so I think it's fair to say, given that we'd had the Livinienko poisoning,
the Russian journalist poisoned with a radioactive material some years before in the UK, that this
was sort of on the radar of the intelligence services. But Sergei Scrippel felt that he was safe.
and I think that appears to have had quite a big play in this.
He felt that he'd been pardoned effectively by the Russians
because they'd allowed him to leave the country as part of a spy swap.
What perhaps hadn't been taken seriously enough
was that he was working with British intelligence,
briefing them on what he knew about the Russians.
And the Russians had said as a famous quote from Vladimir Putin
where he says that traitors will choke on the pieces of silver
that they've swallowed, that there was an anger there.
And despite the fact that,
Sir Gates-Crupal did not want to be put in a safe house, to be given a fake name,
or that sort of thing, perhaps there wasn't enough done to make sure that he was safe
and that this couldn't happen.
Tom Simons
How does a local outbreak of disease morph into a global pandemic?
It's a difficult and sometimes controversial question to answer, as we learned, from COVID-19.
But researchers hope that understanding illnesses of the past can help us with the outbreaks of the future,
A new evidence suggests that one of the deadliest pandemics in world history, the Black Death, spread in part because of a volcanic eruption.
Our science correspondent Helen Briggs reports.
The Black Death is regarded as one of the largest human disasters in history, killing more than half the population in parts of Europe in the mid-14th century.
Scholars have poured over the question of how the bacterial disease spread by rats and their fleas
was carried from its heartland in Central Asia to Europe.
Now climatic clues preserved in tree rings suggest
a volcanic eruption might have been part of the picture.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge say volcanic activity
caused a shock downturn in temperatures which triggered crop failure.
To revert famine, Italian city states were forced to import grain
from north of the Black Sea
and with that came plague-carrying fleas.
Dr. Martin Bork from Germany's Leibniz Institute
for the history and culture of Eastern Europe
helped piece together the clues.
We have the volcano, which we don't know where it is
somewhere in the tropics,
but it has a major climate impact.
And then we have the famine building up
and the reaction of that Italian city states.
But they have this coincidence
that the only region they import their grain from
in this situation happens to be,
infected already by plague. And that's how it spreads very fast and very efficiently into Italy
and probably beyond, maybe also explaining how the Black Death arrived to England.
The experts say this perfect storm of climate change, famine and trade
offers a reminder of how in a globalised and warmer world, diseases can emerge and spread.
Helen Briggs, let's stay with health. Imagine going to a hospital bathroom and realizing it doesn't have any sinks where you can wash your hands. This is what it's like in parts of one UK hospital and it's actually a strategy to fight bacteria. In what's thought to be the first experiment of its kind here, a hospital in England has removed nearly all the sinks from its intensive care unit to minimize waterborne contamination.
It's now believed that hospital sinks, drains, and waste pipes can sometimes cling on to dangerous bacteria.
Hand-washing, when it's not done to a high standard, maybe causing infections rather than preventing them.
Dr. Manjula-Meda is a microbiologist who led this initiative at Wexim Park Hospital in Slough.
She spoke to my colleague, Evan Davis.
What we're understanding increasingly from scientific evidence that's being gathered around the world,
is that antimicrobial resistance or bugs that are resistant to all known antibiotics,
which we are now able to track, is that these bugs are being transmitted from hospital waste
water systems to patients. And the threat is so great that there are estimates which suggest
that there are about 200 people dying every hour globally because of these type of infections.
And a majority of those are due to what we call gram-negative bacteria that are residing
in our hospital drains. Right. So when I wash my hands at a sink, I might be getting the
infection on my hands rather than washing it off. Is that the problem? What's happening is because
of the way sinks have been designed and there's numerous factors like what the velocity of water
is. You can imagine when you turn a tap on, there's always going to be droplets of water that
lands on your clothes, for example, or on the surfaces surrounding the sink. So when this happens,
it's not just the water that's landing on those surfaces or on your hands,
it's also that the bacteria that are there on the sink surface itself or in the sink plug hole,
which can carry various types of really antibiotic resistant bacteria that we often encounter in hospitals.
I get the argument. I mean, it's splashing out of the sink onto you rather than washing off you
into the drains in the sink and then you spread it on patients or among hospital staff.
But this should be a question as to whether this non-washing is a better.
a strategy than washing. This should be a question that has an empirical answer. We should just
know very quickly. Do we have evidence as to what's going on? For many years now, the WHO's standard
for hand decontamination has been that alcohol hand sanitizers are the gold standard. And we've
known this for quite some time. And we know that hand hygiene itself, you know, when you think of
hand washing, it's done effectively at best at about 30 percent of times. You know, it takes at least
20 seconds to wash your hands effectively and then drive them properly.
In a busy hospital environment, you can imagine how difficult this can be.
We have tried numerous different types of hand disinfectants that are hydrating to the skin
and the staff themselves have led this project, have come out and said that this is much better
on their skin than hand washing itself.
And we've tried, in fact, every other strategy to control this.
And many hospitals around the world have, you know, to decontamination.
things, but nothing essentially has worked so far.
Dr. Manjula Meda speaking to Evan Davis.
And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News
podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can
send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can also find us
on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPot.
This edition was produced by Peter Goffin.
It was mixed by Zabihula Karush.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Celia Hatton.
Until next time, goodbye.
