Woman's Hour - 03/04/2009

Presented by Sheila McClennon. Asma Akhtar is a British woman who for two years was unable to return to the UK from Pakistan with her four children because she was not able to get hold of their passports. She was involved in a custody battle with her husband. Now Asma is back in the UK and she explains why she feels the Foreign and Commonwealth Office could have done more to ensure the safe return of the entire family. Jazz singer, outspoken lesbian, stand-up comedian and star of Broadway musicals Lea DeLaria joins Sheila in the Woman's Hour studio, where she performs 'The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea' from her latest album, 'The Live Smoke Sessions'. She explains to Sheila why she's dropped the ranting and raving onstage to concentrate on the music. In 1892, two intrepid sisters made one of the most important religious finds of the century. Hidden in a dark chamber in St Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai, they spotted an ancient manuscript which remains to this day one of the earliest known copies of the Bible. Sheila McClennon is joined by Janet Soskice, the author of a new book about the sisters, and travel writer Dea Birkett to discuss how these two rich and eccentric Ayrshire women were able to make such a priceless find in a remote part of Egypt when women rarely travelled alone. A large trial involving 130,000 women in rural India has found that screening women for HPV, the human papillomavirus which causes cervical cancer, was more effective than the smear test used here. The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that HPV screening could halve the deaths in poor countries. But some doctors argue that HPV tests should also be added to the screening regime here, because they are far less likely than the current smear test to miss a potential cancer. Sheila is joined by Henry Kitchener, professor of gynaecological oncology at the University of Manchester, who is currently running a trial of adding HPV testing to the current screening programme. Including drama: Daunt and Dervish.