EVEREST ER 
5 X 30’ BBC One

Observational documentary series following a team of British doctors as they run the highest hospital in the world at Everest Base Camp

This is medicine practiced at extremes. Their patients will include everyone from the elite of the world’s climbing communities, frostbitten and dying from pulmonary oedema, to gap-year 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, Dr Luanne Freer runs 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.

This gripping series follows the lives of these doctors over the course of one Everest season. When the clinic opens in early spring, there are queues of local people waiting to be treated. And as the season progresses, the big expeditions roll in – the world’s best climbers, the rich businessmen paying to be guided to the top and the hordes of trekkers slogging up the valley to worship at the feet of the world’s most spectacular mountain.

Everest ER will combine the extraordinary life and death drama of healthcare professionals at the extremes of medicine with compelling human stories set against a stunning mountain backdrop.

Executive Producer: Steve Robinson