Every second counts : the race to transplant the first human heart

The dramatic race to transplant the first human heart spanned two years, three continents and five cities against a backdrop of searing tension, scientific brilliance, ethical controversy, racial strife and emotional turmoil.

It culminated in a terrifying moment in the early hours of 3 December 1967 when, in a cramped operating theatre in a Cape Town hospital, Professor Chris Barnard stared into an empty cavity from which he had just removed a heart.

He knew that he had only minutes left to make history and save the life of a 55-year-old man by filling the gaping hole in his chest with a heart which had just been beating inside a 25-year-old woman.

EVERY SECOND COUNTS is the story of this gripping race to conquer the greatest of medical challenges.

The kind of true story that would be dismissed as far-fetched if presented as fiction, it combines an utterly compelling portrait of cutting-edge science with raw human drama, and shows how the course of medicine itself was changed for ever.