Everest ER (Documentary, English)
Genres: Medical
Status: Ended
Premiered: 2009-05-25
Ended: 2009-06-22
Network: BBC One
Country: GB
Airs on: Monday
Air time: 19:30
Runtime: 60 minutes
For this team of doctors, patients include everyone from the elite of the world's climbing communities, frostbitten and dying from pulmonary edema, to holiday trekkers with altitude sickness, and local children suffering from all the illnesses you might expect to find in one of the world's poorest countries. These volunteers must make life and death decisions on a daily basis, a world away from the facilities of a modern hospital. Evacuation from this altitude is either a two-day walk on the back of a porter or an expensive and dangerous helicopter ride. Further up the valley, on the Khumbu Glacier itself, sits the Everest Base Camp Clinic. Everest's magnetism is now such that in the peak climbing season, Base Camp can be home to thousands of people. And at this altitude, getting sick is a very serious business.