Supported projects

BRUSSELS - The sperm bank appeals to the imagination. Especially its pioneering years, when there were no rules and doctors did as they pleased. Yet hardly anyone knows how it used to be, because donor insemination happened in the greatest secrecy.

CAPE TOWN - While in Belgium almost eighty per cent of the population has been vaccinated, in Africa the percentage is still pitifully low.

BRUSSELS - Suffering from Parkinson's disease or cancer, European farm workers experience inadequate recognition and failing compensation schemes, a cross-border research of media in ten European countries shows.

AMSTERDAM/BRUSSELS - 70 to 90 per cent of patients with unexplained symptoms are women. Why do female patients receive a (correct) diagnosis less often? What is the impact of this on their lives? How can this be done differently and better in the future? In the podcast Geen kleine man (No little man ...

BRUSSELS - BRUSSELS – One in ten Belgians uses strong painkillers such as oxycodone, tramadol and fentanyl. While these are effective painkillers, they carry a high risk of addiction: around 8% of people who come into contact with opioid painkillers become dependent on them. The longer you take them ...

AMSTERDAM - From the age of twelve until the age of twenty-two, Erwin Roebroeks was in the grip of a compulsive disorder. He showered eight hours a day, drank soapsuds while wearing surgical gowns, and cut open his skin to be able to clean the inside. At first, the medical world wrote him off ...

BRUSSELS - In elderly care, sleeping pills, sedatives, antidepressants and antipsychotics are widely used. This is not a new phenomenon. Already in 2006, a study brought alarming figures to light. Since then, the pill shop in Flemish residential care centres has been running smoothly. Is the ...

SAMOS - The harrowing conditions in the hotspots of the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos and Chios have created a mental health crisis. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and self-harm are the most common mental health problems reported by NGOs in the field.

BRUSSELS - How will this pandemic shape the next generation? The middle class is fighting a valiant battle to reconcile family and professional life, but the vulnerable are fighting the same battle with more limited resources.

SANAA - Yemen already suffered from a high rate of birth defects and infant mortality before the war, due in part to intrafamily marriages and lack of family planning, but the hospitals we visited in three different provinces are adamant that there has been an unprecedented increase since the war. 

BERLIN - From Croatia to France, from Germany to Italy, a team of journalists came across cases of sexual harassment and sexualised violence in physician-patient interactions.

Although narcissism is a popular theme in today's media, there is also much confusion about it. This series explores what narcissism is and how destructive the consequences can be for people in close contact with a narcissist. The witnesses are former partners or relatives of.

VILNIUS - As an investigative team of journalists watched the pandemic unfold in early 2020, their plans for reporting in 15 European countries were scuttled. But they began to see patterns in covid-denialism that mimicked what they had seen with anti-vaxxers. They decided to expand their project to ...

KYIV - The unregulated surrogacy sphere in Ukraine, controls at the external border of the European Union as well as the closed borders and restrictions on movement introduced in 2020 due to COVID-19, lead to questionable decisions like moving Ukrainian women across the border to Poland to continue ...

BRUSSELS - How did we come to pay gold for a drug whose effectiveness has not been proven? This is the story of Remdesivir, a drug developed by the American company Gilead Sciences with large public funds to combat Ebola, and in July approved by the European Medicines Agency with "conditional ...

BRUSSELS - A pregnancy test that could lead to a miscarriage or a child with a birth defect. Abroad, the drug Duogynon is causing controversy to this day. This autumn, a British victims' organisation is suing the manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant Schering (now Bayer).

SCHIEDAM - A radically different view of cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, that is what The Cholesterol Myth is all about. Part of it is that cholesterol is no longer the big bogeyman, but, according to experts, can be seen as a positive, body-specific, even healing substance. On closer ...

MERKSPLAS - March 2020. Corona shuts down Belgium. Everyone has to stay inside. Door closed, one hour a day outside. A story that sounds familiar to the residents of Merksplas prison.

BRUSSELS - As a child, journalist Brecht Castel lost his father after suicide. Twenty years later he is left with questions. Questions that not only concern himself, because in Flanders an average of three people get out of life every day.

BRUSSELS - There is a big illegal market for pesticides and antibiotics and these substances will still be spread, when they get banned. The industry has been able to continue the use of chlorpyrifos and expect the use to grow in the coming years, despite it has a huge and bad impact on animals and ...

CHANG MAI - In a small village in Thailand, Pomm takes care of Europeans with Alzheimer’s. Separated from her children, she helps Elisabeth during the final stages of her life, as a new patient arrives from Switzerland.

GHENT - The measures that Flemish universities have taken to lower the threshold for reporting transgressive behaviour are effective at first sight. The number of reports has increased, among others at the University of Ghent, because victims (dare to) report faster. However, that does not mean that ...

MALTA - The model for the privatisation of Malta’s public hospitals negotiated by now disgraced Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, with the approval of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, was exported to Balkan States with weak democratic structures that enable ...

DILOVASI - The Toxic Valley project looks into the environmental consequences of industrialisation in Turkey, and reveals a pattern of chemical dumping and polluting that has led to a widespread health crisis in the Kocaeli region, the most heavily industrialised area of the country.

ZAGREB - Although women have the legal right to abortion across the vast majority of countries in Europe, women in some east European countries are finding it tougher to terminate pregnancies. Our grantees looked into examples of Croatia, Romania, and Poland.

MOMBASA - Counterfeit and substandard drugs are believed to kill thousands of people annually. The trade of substandard or falsified medicines has grown to a $30 billion black market industry. Experts warn that the number of counterfeit or substandard goods entering Africa is on the rise.

BRUSSELS - Residues of Chlorpyrifos, a dangerous insecticide, have been found in fruit baskets and samples of human urine across Europe. This large, cross-border investigation unveils its risks for the public. 

BRUSSELS - If you or your mother were born between 1947 and 1977, there is a chance that you will recognize yourself in this story about DES. Maybe your mother or grandmother took DES as a medicine when she was pregnant.

KINSHASHA - In the maternity clinics in Kinshasa, hundreds of mothers and their newborn children are locked up. Weeks, months, sometimes even years. Reason: they cannot pay hospital bills after childbirth. The report "Gasthuis Gevangenis" (Hospital prison) investigates this phenomenon and goes in ...

PRISTINA - Twenty years ago, tons of depleted uranium ammunition were dropped on Kosovo. What happened to the soldiers who were stationed there? Why is the weapon still in use, despite all warnings?