PIP: a global health scandal

PIP - three letters which stir up fear in any woman with breast implants. This week we talk to women with silicone implants made by the French manufacturer, Poly Implant Prothèse, to find out how the global health scandal is affecting their daily lives.

HEALTH

By Claire WILLIAMS / Joanna SITRUK / Kate WILLIAMS / Lara MELLOUL / Mairead DUNDAS / Marina BERTSCH

We follow a patient in France who’s opted to get her PIP implants replaced with a safer pair of fake breasts.

In Spain, our correspondents interview a woman in constant pain who’s waited two years to have her PIP implants removed. According to her surgeon, they have ruptured. We also meet a group of women who have come together to collect evidence against PIP, in the hope of persuading the Spanish government to fund operations for women to have them removed.

We also look at how the procedure that medical devices go through to be certified fit-for-use is allowing potentially faulty products to slip through the net.

Mairead Dundas

Presenter

27/05/2012 - HEALTH

Medicine on the Frontline

Doctors who risk their lives to save other people’s, scientists working on growing blood in a lab and researchers aiming to erase traumatic war memories – it’s all in this week’s Health show.

13/05/2012 - HEALTH

Globesity: Weighing up the options

The French might be renowned for their slim figures, but in reality, France is catching up with the United States. One in two adults is overweight and the situation in France now resembles that of the US twenty years ago. We weigh up efforts to beat globesity – a new term that describes the growing global health problem.