Chhavi Sachdev

Shoes are a surprisingly recent human invention. But running isn’t. That means for most of our time on the planet, we’ve run barefoot. Today, in most countries it’s rare to see people out in public without shoes, let alone running. But might our aversion to the free foot be causing us pain?

CrowdScience mega-fan Hnin is an experienced runner, she enjoys ultra-marathons back home in Australia. But about six months ago she developed extreme foot pain, the condition ‘Plantar Fasciitis’, and this has meant she had to stop doing what she loves. She reached out to CrowdScience presenter Chhavi Sach

The surge of Covid-19 cases in huge cities like Mumbai has brought attention to a long-standing problem – the lack of sanitation and access to toilets. Health Check reporter Chhavi Sachdev reports.

The new Play Well exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London looks at the significance of play in childhood and across society as a way of learning, expressing emotions and building empathy. Two schoolgirls give Claudia their verdict on the exhibition.

Chhavi Sachdev talked to children from the Indian cities of Delhi and Mumbai reveal what they like to play – and how it’s changed over the years (as well as questions about why adults don't play)

As CrowdScience celebrates its third birthday, the team takes time to revisit some of our early episodes, and catch up with listeners to discover if the answers we uncovered changed the course of their lives? We hear from Zach, who has learned to let go of a possibly lost memory and Erin, who discovered technology could hold the key to finding the man of her dreams in conversation with Chhavi Sachdev

As part of a programme on touch, I visited a project in the city of Mumbai where blind women are using their sense of touch to examine women for breast lumps. Medical Tactile Examiners are trained for a year and they bring a sense of dignity, privacy as well as thoroughness to the process for patients.

In the 1970s hundreds of thousands of wells were dug across Bangladesh to give people access to cholera-free water. But this led to what the World Health Organization has called the largest mass poisoning of a population in history, worse than Chernobyl. That’s because the water in the wells wasn’t tested for arsenic. Decades on, it’s a major problem. The WHO says more than 35 million Bangladeshis have been chronically exposed to arsenic in their drinking water, and about 40,000 die of arsenicosis every year. The field test for it is inaccurate and prone to human error. Most Bangladeshis drink

Imagine a grocery shop selling all your basic goods at a discounted price… and if you buy enough you also get free health insurance. It might seem too good to be true, but stores like this have been introduced at some factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Social entrepreneur Saif Rashid is trying to get better health care to some of the millions of garment factory workers who are on low wages. For them, to lose a day’s pay by taking time off sick can be disastrous and affording decent health care is almost impossible.

Now, with this scheme, they can get health insurance at the same time as getting

Five years ago India’s Prime Minster Narendra Modi pledged that every citizen would be able to use a toilet, instead of answering nature’s call...in nature. This would mean providing toilet facilities for hundreds of millions of people. And now, the Prime Minster has declared the country open defecation free. Reporter Chhavi Sachdev explores if the plan has really worked.
The story starts at 09'17

For the growing number of working women in Dhaka, commuting to work can be a challenge. The traffic is terrible and cars and taxis are expensive. Public transport is not only inconvenient, it is sometimes unsafe - many women face unwanted sexual attention on buses.
After his wife was harassed by a taxi driver, one young entrepreneur set up a motorbike ride-share service with a difference. Not only are the customers all women, the drivers are too.
Reporter Chhavi Sachdev meets some brave women finding new ways to navigate Bangladeshi traffic and society.

(Photo Credit: BBC)

[BBC Health Check] starts at 13'30

Indian authorities are enacting rules to limit the weight of children’s school bags after a campaign highlighting the dangers of heavy school bags. Children have developed of back pain, skeletal and nerve damage because of the weight of the textbooks they have been expected to carry. Chhavi Sachdev talks to overburdened children, parents, doctors and school teachers.

Image: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/school-bag-schoolbag-backpack-4308691/

Waste, trash, garbage – whatever you call it, unwanted materials have become a major presence in many of our lives and our environment. Every year it is estimated that humans around the world produce 2 billion metric tonnes of waste. Listener Clare from Devon in the UK wants to start tackling this herself. She would like to know if she can not just sort but process all her own recycling at home.

Presenter Marnie Chesterton attempts to find out by asking the professionals. She heads out to an industrial-scale recycling plant to see if any of their gear could work in our homes, hears from repor

In this 30 minute show about milk, I contributed a segment from India talking to people about their milk consumption - we are one of the highest producers AND consumers of dairy in the world, here in India.

Engineer Anand Malligavad is a lake enthusiast trying to bring India’s dried up lakes back to life. His plan is to regenerate 45 lakes in the Bangalore area by 2025.

He has been making progress, as he tells Outlook’s Chhavi Sachdev as they took a lakeside walk. The story starts at about 35 minutes in.

[Podcast] According to the World Health Organisation more than 120 million couples globally want contraceptives but do not have access to them or do not like the existing options. There is clearly a need for something different, but new forms of contraception are slow to come to the market. For several decades, there have been attempts to develop a contraceptive vaccine which works very differently from long-lasting hormonal injections. A 92 year-old scientist in India is currently leading the way. Chhavi Sachdev reports form the city of Delhi.

Did you know that each neighbourhood in the skinny island city of Mumbai boasts a government-appointed area for vegetable and fruit sellers? If it is cupcake moulds, antique gewgaws, wedding bangles and all sorts of Indian trinkets that you’re looking for, other markets will come to the rescue.
Probably as a result of the expensive real estate, in addition to restaurants, pubs and clubs, the majority of ground floors across local buildings are leased out to stores. What follows is that findin...