W5 returns Saturday

From a media release:

W5 Launches 49th Season with Alarming Canada-Wide Inpatient Suicide Investigation, This Saturday on CTV

  • Award-winning investigative series returns after closing out banner 2013-2014 season as the most-watched non-sports program in primetime Saturday nights
  • Kevin Newman’s revealing inquiry uncovers troubling evidence of the failure by Canadian hospitals to protect suicidal patients
  • Also this week, Tom Kennedy tracks the rapidly spreading and deadly Ebola outbreak in Africa

W5, Canada’s #1 investigative documentary series, returns for its 49th season with a hard-hitting investigation into a sad and frightening national secret – the alarming rate of hospital patient suicides. Premiering this Saturday, October 4 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV, CTV GO, and also available on-demand on CTV News GO, W5 Co-Host and Correspondent Kevin Newman delivers “SUICIDE WATCH”, the first national investigation into mistakes largely hidden from the public, uncovering statistics kept secret by hospitals and government, until now. W5 spent months collecting statistics from every province, using dozens of freedom of information requests to identify the number of suicidal patients who took their own lives during the past 10 years while in care at a Canadian hospital.

Just how tragic these cases can be, is demonstrated through the stories of two families who cooperated with W5 to reveal how hospital failures allowed their loved ones to take their own lives in the very place they were believed to be safe. In Mission, B.C., Newman meets with the family of Ross Allan, still devastated that the 22-year-old was able to take his own life while under 24-hour observation by hospital staff. In Brampton, Ont., the Tiwari family has been demanding answers after 20-year-old Prashant Tiwari took his own life while in a special ward for suicidal patients. While the grieving parents search for answers, they were stonewalled by hospital bureaucracies conducting secret internal investigations.

W5 obtained security footage showing Allan roaming the hospital hallways unsupervised, finding an electrical cord that he would later use to take his own life. His death was not an isolated incident, as W5 reveals six cases of inpatient suicides in Fraser Health facilities during the past 10 years; three of them following Ross’ death. Through freedom of information, W5 fought for the release of statistics from every province to identify the staggering number of suicidal patients who took their own lives during the past decade while in care at a Canadian hospital.

W5 Correspondent Tom Kennedy reports the second story in the premiere episode, “THE EBOLA PLAGUE.” Kennedy tracks the rapidly spreading and deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, which has now infected thousands in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria, with an estimated 50% death rate. With governments and health agencies desperately seeking to stop the epidemic, W5 looks at the work being done by Canadians to fight the disease and investigates what would happen if the Ebola outbreak spreads to Canada.

This season follows a landmark year for W5, which saw the program perform as Canada’s most-watched non-sports program on Saturday nights. The 48th season reached 2.31 million unique viewers in Canada per episode.** Earlier this year W5 was awarded the prestigious Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism and Best News Information Segment during the 2014 Canadian Screen Awards. This achievement marked the first time the Gordon Sinclair Award was given to a program which traditionally honours the work of individuals.

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