File on 4 Investigates Folgen

Ebola is now regarded as an international threat to peace and security, according to the World Health Organisation. Yet, when the WHO was first warned of an unprecedented outbreak, the organisation said it was "still relatively small." Now the UK has asked for volunteers to travel to West Africa to try to bring Ebola under control. Thousands of American troops are also flying out to the region. But could all this have been avoided? Simon Cox asks why it took so long for the world to wake up to the threat posed by Ebola? He also investigates the treatments that are now, belatedly, being developed - treatments that have existed for decades. Vaccines and other drugs are being rushed into production at an unprecedented pace, by-passing the usual safety controls. However, all predictions are that many more people will die before the disease is brought under control. Even then, will it become endemic?Reporter: Simon Cox Producer: John Murphy.

In the biggest outsourcing to date, the NHS in England has announced it is tendering a huge £700 million contract for providing NHS cancer care in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, along with another £500million for end of life care in the region. Officials say it will streamline services and provide better treatment while critics say it's the most reckless privatisation yet. BBC Health Editor Hugh Pym investigates.. Producer: Paul Grant.

The nature of crime is changing, with much of it now happening online, sparking growing concern that official figures fail to account for potentially millions of fraud offences. Experts say frauds involving plastic debit and credit cards are among the crimes left out of the data. So just how reliable - and useful - are the statistics?At the same time, police economic crime units, which investigate fraud, have become increasingly stretched, partly as a result of government budget cuts. BBC Home Affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw, asks whether law enforcement has kept pace with the changing face of fraud and if there are enough resources to tackle financial crime and bring fraudsters to justice.Reporter: Danny Shaw Producer: Ian Muir-Cochrane.