Last night was the first night we had to start doing work...we had our first lecture at 6pm with Dr. Salcedo on dengue. It was surprisingly...kind of...boring. I think it was the fact that it was hot and we were hungry. Also, after listening to so much English for the past couple of days, it was kind of hard to immediately switch back to all Spanish, so it was a little difficult for me to translate again. I hope this isn't a sign of how fast I'm going to lose my Spanish skills when I get back to the states.
Today was the first day of our Dengue brigades. It was interesting learning about the disease. Basically dengue is transmitted by mosquitoes that are of the species Aedes aegypti. Their whole biological life cycle lasts about 2 months, and it takes approximately 10-14 days for them to hatch from an egg and develop into an adult depending on the temperature and environmental factors. The cause of dengue is NOT from the mosquito bites, but rather from the virus present in the mosquitoes. The medicine used to kill the larva is called abate. It is put into the water to kill the larva. The larva dies by ingesting the abate, and the chemicals kill the larva.
Water is delivered to the people twice per week. Since the people are allocated a specific amount of water, they try to save as much as possible by storing it in tanks and cisterns. However, by leaving the water there, it harbors mosquitoes. Dengue symptoms are very similar to many other diseases; thus, it is very hard to distinguish from other diseases. If untreated, it can develop into hemorrahgic dengue. Basically, conditions and accessibility is a huge contribution to this disease. Treatment for this disease is only symptomatic meaning there is no cure. =(
Vector brigades consisted of checking houses for the Aedes mosquito larva in random houses (ie. random sampling). These houses have been routinely checked for larva, and if the house turns out to be positive for larva, then they apply treatment immediately. Anyhow, it was really hot, but it was also interesting going into the houses and checking the water. It was interesting for me to see the rural setting since I wasn't really exposed to it during my clinical rotations. These people live with chickens and dirt floors and stuff.
Overall, after 4 hours of checking, we only found 1 house that had 1 Aedes larva. I really enjoyed this new experience! Tomorrow, we have chagas brigades and then on Friday, presentations on how to prevent both diseases!
Anyways, I think I'll upload pictures tomorrow...today's internet is really sucky! :(
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