Season 42

As rich nations celebrate the success of their Covid vaccination programmes, most people in Africa haven't even received one life-saving injection. As variants of the virus emerge from unvaccinated populations, Seyi Rhodes visits South Sudan to investigate the reasons behind vaccine inequality. Poor of non-existent distribution of the vaccine is only one problem as Rhodes meets many people convinced by claims that vaccines are deadly. As anti-vaxx sentiment grows amid a stalling rollout, Rhodes meets a pro-vaxx preacher in a refugee camp with a David-versus-Goliath task.

With the pandemic leaving many Thais cash-strapped and jobless, huge numbers of farmers and traders alike have turned to crypto to boost their fortunes. Though cryptocurrency is volatile, prone to scammers and market manipulation, Thailand remains a crypto-friendly nation, keen to harness new blockchain innovations in a new technological era. Jonathan Miller travels to north-eastern Thailand to meet a rice farmer who's trading crypto using a smartphone, solar panel and online tutorials. However, in Bangkok, a man who made and lost nearly a million US dollars represents the downside to crypto.

Ashionye Ogene travels to the bustling market of Kantamanto, in Ghana's capital city Accra, to meet the traders struggling to sell the clothes the UK no longer wants. In 2019, roughly 63 million kilograms of clothes were imported into Ghana from the UK to 30,000 traders, who relied on good-quality second-hand clothes to make a living. However, what isn't sold is going to waste and contributing to an environmental catastrophe. Mountains of waste exist on the outskirts of the city, much of which can take up to 200 years to decompose, with excess waste spilling over into the city's slums.

Guillermo Galdos reports from Ecuador's bloody cocaine wars, where the national murder rate has doubled in a year, as local police are outnumbered and outgunned by lethal cartels.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy reports from St Louis, Missouri, highlighting a drugs epidemic that has killed more people than Covid and is disproportionately affecting black people. Opioid painkiller fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin and much cheaper to buy. Its devastating effects are being felt across the US, but particularly in rust belt middle-America towns like St Louis, which not only has one of the highest murder rates in the States, but last year also saw 436 overdose deaths. Guru-Murthy meets residents trying to dull the pain of their life with fentanyl.

Fatima Manji meets the policewomen taking on Pakistan's gender violence epidemic - as one of the most dangerous places to be a woman finally addresses the deadly trend.