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Can Tweets Trace Food Poisoning Outbreaks?

Claudia Hammond on why tweeting about your night-long vomiting attack could be good for public health; beating bilharzia in Uganda; and the therapeutic power of music.

Claudia Hammond talks to Dr Elaine Nsoesie of the University of Washington, Seattle about her work on real time tracking and tracing of restaurant food poisoning outbreaks by using people’s tweets and web reviews after bouts of vomiting and worse.

Uganda is aiming to rid its people and waters of the parasitic disease, bilharzia or Schistosomiasis, by the year 2020. Meera Senthilingam reports from Lake Victoria on the efforts to improve sanitation and deliver medical treatment in fishing communities.

BBC Health correspondent James Gallagher talks about research which suggests that your musical preferences reveal how empathic you are as a person.

Claudia also visits Raw Sounds – a community music project in South London aimed at exploiting the therapeutic power of making music for people with mental health problems.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

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28 minutes

Last on

Thu 13 Aug 2015 13:32GMT

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  • Wed 12 Aug 2015 18:32GMT
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  • Wed 12 Aug 2015 23:32GMT
  • Thu 13 Aug 2015 02:32GMT
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  • Thu 13 Aug 2015 13:32GMT

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