Earlier this week I went to the bush on an outbreak investigation. Earlier in the week the clinician at the health clinic noticed a cluster of people visiting with a pretty bad upper respiratory illness of some sort. So, we went to take samples (just the nurses could do this) and to help investigate what was going on. I, and two public health nurses chartered a plain to the village of about 100 people to investigate actually what was going on. Now we believe it was probably just the flu, but some people were getting so sick that they were passing out from coughing so much (which could be pertusis). Since I couldn't do any of the specimen collection I was in charge of keeping a line list of information about all the individuals who were sick, and then making an "epi curve" to track the spread of disease.
I don't think I'm supposed to say which village it actually took place in--since it was so small, but what made this particular investigation so interesting is that it was located at the site where a big mining company is conducting environmental exploration to get permits to start mining. Some think that the tailings from the mine could harm the fishing industry, which is the big livelihood of the area. So, needless to say, there was a lot of politics going on. We had to sift through all of the information we gathered because there was a lot of conflicting info between the villagers and the outside mining people.
1 comment:
That's exciting that you got to go on your first outbreak investigation! The highlight of my week was completely reorganizing my classroom, including moving furniture around this afternoon.
Post a Comment