12/02/2012 Reporters

Those are the latest headlines. The ordeal of the besieged people

of Homs. We report on the citizens trying to survive the Syrian

bombardment. Did civilians jump the queue and stop these Libyan war

casualties from getting treatment abroad?

Can the Swedish model of an equal society survive in a changing

world? Leaving his mark all over Moscow, the street artist known as

Welcome to Reporters. When the Syrian government ordered

the bombardment of Homs on 4th February, they called it an

operation to crush armed resistance. Since then, it is believed that

hundreds were killed by fire from mortar shells and rockets.

Activists speak of attacks on the streets. Paul Wood and Fred Scott

are some of the few Western It began at dawn. For a fifth day,

Homs was under bombardment. Some said it was the worst day of

shelling. Syrian tanks roamed menacingly. People are afraid of

the regime. They think it may make a final push. The casualties are

mounting. Most are civilians. They had put their hopes in a UN

resolution but it was vetoed by Russia and China. They are bitter

about that. This child is about three years old. He got hit by a

bomb. Is this what the UN is waiting for? Until they kill all

the children and all the women? Homs is shattered and terrified

after many punishing days of this. Hundreds of shells and mortar bombs

have been fired at this place. Amid all the grief and panic, the one

thing you hear from the people again and again is that they feel

abandoned by the outside world. They have not been out to play

since the uprising began. Their mothers are in despair.

TRANSLATION: The outside world will not help us. But the vengeance of

God will come down on the Syrian president. The Kalashnikovs of the

Free Syrian Army can do little against tanks. They hope the

regime's forces will crumble from the inside. The Syrian army's

morale has collapsed. They know they are killing civilians and they

want this bloodbath to stop. As the bodies pile up, the prevailing mood

is one of despair. People feel trapped and they believe nobody is

During Libya's eight-month conflict, tens of thousands of people were

injured last year. Proper medical treatment is hard to come by in the

country. The new interim government promised to send the wounded abroad

for medical treatment. It has emerged that thousands of people

have jumped the queue, receiving free medical care in countries like

Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. Corruption is being blamed. This

report from Tripoli. Libya's war may be over but not the

ordeal of its wounded. This man tells his story. His car was

sprayed with bullets last August, shattering his leg. He has been

waiting three months to get it fixed abroad. Day after day they

come here to The Committee that decides who gets sent overseas.

Today, only Dr Osama Falefla has shown up. He is besieged by angry

patients. They protest only well- connected people have been chosen.

This is my job. Where is everybody else? I don't know. These people

need an answer. They need to know if they can get treatment. I don't

know. Thousands of Libyans have been able to go abroad at the

government's expense. Tripoli Airport is a busy place with more

flights meeting the enormous demand for Libyans wanted to travel

overseas. Many of them have been taking advantage of the generous

government funded medical treatment in foreign hospitals. But only a

small proportion of those were actually wounded in battle. These

passengers have come back from Jordan. For three months, the

hospitals there have been filled to capacity with Libyan patients. Most

of them are families who went to Jordan for routine ailments, some

surprised to learn they could get all their costs covered.

government has helped us and given us all the money, money for hotels,

they helped us, really. The new government has been forced to halt

the scheme. It has been an embarrassing and expensive blunder.

How much money has been spent on this scheme? $800 million. We have

40,000 people out. A lot of them are the wrong patients? I would say

about 10% or 15% are wounded. Libyans now expect a lot of their

country. Treating the wounded is supposed to have been a top

priority. But it went so wrong that it has badly shaken confidence in a

Pakistan's lucrative pharmaceutical industry is trying to recover its

reputation after a scandal in which more than 100 patients died from

the effects of contaminated heart medicines. Tests showed that the

pills contained a lethal dose of anti-malarial chemicals. The

tragedy has focused attention on We are with a drug inspector on a

raid of a pharmaceutical factory. It is suspected that medicines

supplied from here had no active ingredient and a little more use

than sweets. This is sub-standard. We will never know how many

patients have already taken the medicines or how many may have been

made worse thanks to this drug manufacturer. While they may be

carrying out raids now, the Pakistani authorities have been

accused of not being good enough at regulating the drugs available in

hospitals, chemists and markets. In this one area, we found dozens of

these small stores selling medicines. You can get whatever you

want without a prescription and you can even buy the components to make

up your own drugs. Very few of these traders are properly licensed

and a very few of the medicines are properly checked. Checking would

have prevented over 100 heart patients losing their lives

recently. Many more people have been hospitalised. The locally

produced drugs may have been given by government doctors were

contaminated. The pharmaceutical business is booming in Pakistan.

But the companies who provide the drugs do not check their medicines

in their own laboratories. The people who bought the medicine were

not very vigilant. They should have checked it also. The government

blames everyone else. Pakistan has recently gotten rid of its National

Ministry of Health. There is confusion over who monitors

pharmaceuticals and many inside the industry feel the recent tragedy is

almost inevitable. This is the initial attack. The worst is still

to be expected. You need to have a regulatory authority. Until that

happens, confidence in the Pakistani industry, which currently

exports medicines to over 30 countries, could decline further.

The worry for patients is that without regulation, more lives will

Now to northern Nigeria, where 400 children are being killed and many

more at risk after what Human Rights Watch calls the world's

worst lead poisoning epidemic. They say that despite warnings two years

ago, dangerous gold mining in the area is expanding, while attempts

This is one of the poorest parts of Nigeria that is mineral rich. The

people here found out how to mine and process the minerals. But it

came at a heavy price. Deadly lead dust was released as the ore was

crushed. It entered people's homes and their blood. Bagega is now the

most contaminated place in the region. Amina grew up there.

TRANSLATION: I have six children. Each time one died, I was so upset.

Seven have died so far in this compound. If you include mine, 10

have died. 400 children have already died. The levels of lead

measured in Amina's place were six times greater. This is something

that is clearly very tragic. Something that should not have

happened at all and we should have done more. The mortality rate has

dropped significantly over the past two years and the government has

helped clean up seven villages. There has been some action from the

government but the issue is really that there are 2,000 children who

are in urgent need of treatment right now. Those children cannot be

treated until their homes are cleaned up. They cannot be cleaned

up until safer mining actions are implemented. Gold exports are

estimated to bring in $0.5 million a year. But farmers are worried

practices will be banned in the north and human rights groups are

concerned that will push malpractices further underground.

Now it is said another seven villages are affected, all facing

the same problem. And there is not decontamination. The race is

against time but crucial funding continues as many children in the

north face the possibility of brain damage or worse. Sweden is often

described as one of the most equal societies in the world and has one

of the lowest levels of poverty. So it is no surprise that Sweden

consistently appears near the top of the Human Development Index. But

they pay high taxes to maintain their pride social welfare system.

Universal healthcare, equal opportunities and access to

education are among those benefits available to Swedish citizens. But

as we report from Stockholm, many are starting to ask if the Swedish

model can survive in the changing world. Equality comes early in

Sweden. This is a pre-school class in the Stockholm suburb of Nacka.

It takes children as young as 18 months. Parents come from all

social classes. Teachers, cleaners, doctors. Eight out of ten women

here have jobs. It does wonders for equality between the sexes. The

government in Stockholm presides over one of the most equal

societies in the world, thanks partly to the generous welfare

system. The gap between the rich and poor is narrower here than

almost everywhere else and equality, say the experts, is good for

society. The more equal societies are supposed to have a lower crime

rate, less health inequalities and better life chances for young

people. It does not matter where in society you are born, you have

enough chances to get a good education and have a good life.

Sweden does have its class differences. This is Fisksatra, one

of the poorest and most densely populated areas. But just down the

road is Saltsjobaden, one of the wealthiest areas. Some people say

the income differences in Sweden have started to get wider. The rich

who can afford to live in wealthier districts like Saltsjobaden are

getting richer, thanks to higher pay and lower taxes. And the poor

are getting poorer as well. On the left, they say Sweden is becoming

more like other European societies. Once Sweden was, back in the 60s

when my parents came here from Turkey, something else if you

compare it to today. A huge difference after 50 years. For now,

Sweden remains enviably wealthy. Even the poorest have good

standards of living. Keeping it that way it may prove a challenge.

After the riots, parts of British society were described as broken.

The government pledged to tackle what it called troubled families

and it turned to America for one of its key programmes to intervene

early in a child's life to prevent vulnerable young people growing up

to be criminals. Our reporter went to Colorado where early

intervention is having a dramatic effect, apparently. One of the

worst school massacres in US history took place here at

Columbine High. Two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher.

It shocked the city so much, they had a long look at how the most at

risk children could be better brought up so it would never happen

again. They evidence saw early intervention as the answer. These

children are from poor homes where violence and neglect are common.

Through Dinosaur School, they learn how to cope with their anger and

frustration. Now he is really mad! What should he do? Should he hit

her? No. Early intervention is all about getting the children from

poor neighbourhoods as early as possible. Colorado has a system, on

trial in Britain and around the world, targeting young and

vulnerable pregnant women. It has reduced the number of child abuse

by half, behaviour problems by two- thirds and has dramatically reduced

the number of children who go on to commit a crime as teenagers. The

international pioneer of early intervention is Professor David

Olds. His methods have been vigorously tested and have been

proven to be effective. What we are really trying to do is to nurture

and support what we think is an instinctive drive in all of us who

are human beings. That is to protect our children. It is not so

much altering as a matter of supporting what is instinctively

there. This girl is two years old. Since her mother was pregnant, a

specially trained nurse has helped her bring up her baby and turn her

life around. She finishes her tantrum and when she is done, you

acknowledge she is OK. I have gained so much knowledge and so

many different tools that I can use to help me and Daniel be successful

parents. I would be lost without the programme on what to do and

what resources there are to help me. The progress made by early

intervention here has been dramatic. Perhaps what has been tested in

America can now work in other parts of the world. A mysterious 28-year-

old street artist is being held by some as the Russian Banksy. His art

sometimes involves simple spray paint on walls but others are more

complex, involving things like fire. He protects his true identity

carefully but the man who calls himself Pavel 183 agreed to a

secret meeting with our Moscow correspondent. It was a visit to an

art gallery like no other. The abandoned trains and across rarely

used railway tracks. But what we found there among the spray-painted

graffiti tags was a work of a much higher quality. The artist is a

kind of Russian Banksy. He also chooses to remain anonymous,

calling himself Pavel 183. He is known for progressing through

graffiti to what he calls street art. TRANSLATION: pure graffiti

ought to only exist on trains. Street art is more interesting for

me because it opens up more techniques than just painting on

the wall. Pavel 183 photographs his more complicated installations

because many are transient. They quickly disappear back into the

urban environment. He often works with what he finds, filming himself

as he goes. In this case, using abandoned concrete slabs to create

giant versions of one of Russia's favourite chocolate bars. Pavel

183's art is very simple and accessible but when you start to

think about it, it is very beautiful and has its own unique

atmosphere. At this time of political discontent in Russia,