i want to go to there.

DENGUE WARRIORS

After san jose, we went back up to la selva. As part of the program, we participate in various community outreach activities to promote global health (as you may have noticed). The local EBAIS (equipo básico de atención integral en salud) asked us to perform a community survey about knowledge of dengue, and to check the houses for possible mosquito breeding grounds, since this was one of the few dengue endemic areas in costa rica.

Just some background on Dengue. It is transmitted by mosquito and generally causes a very high fever and other flu-like symptoms. There are 4 different serotypes of Dengue. If you get bitten again by a mosquito that carries a different version of the dengue virus, without going into too many details, you can hemmorrhage and die. So while dengue once isnt too bad, dengue twice can be extremely dangerous.

The neighborhood we surveyed had a variety of houses, some in very bad condition, and others very nice looking. Everyone was very friendly, and let us go on their patio to look for breeding grounds (pools of clean, stagnant water). For the most part, everyone had either had or knew someone who had dengue. Therefore they were pretty educated about the disease…its carried by aedes egypti mosquito, which are big with black and white stripes, it gives you a fever, it bites in mornings, etc. Some had things in their yard that could form breeding grounds at the next rain, so we flipped them over (usually flower pots) and told them to be careful.

One house stands out in particular. It was a pretty nice house compared to many of the ones we had visited. The woman in the house was very educated about dengue, since she had it only 4 years ago. Upon investigating her yard, we noticed half eated coconut husks, dog bowls, and this weird piece of motor equipment that she failed to dispose of, ALL with pools of water in them. Upon further investigation, ALL of these pools contained mosquito larvae. Upon investigation with a microscope, ALL of the larvae were aedes egypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue. She was the dengue breeding ground for the whole neighborhood. We put the larvae in test tubes and showed the woman. My professor kindly told her, “this mosquito you are growing in your yard, if it bites you, you can die.”

back to san jose…

After spring break, we spent a week in san jose to go on a few field trips and get back in the swing of things. We went on a trip to the water treatment plant and to clinica biblica, a private hospital in San Jose. The hospital was amazing. it is mostly used by tourist and by Costa Ricans who don’t want to wait in the public system for minor emergencies. Everything is paid from pocket or private insurance and if you cannot pay for a treatment, you are stabilized and sent to another hospital. The hospital doesnt actually have any doctors on payroll. Doctors can rent their offices in the hospital and rent each OR’s if they schedule an operation with a private patient. The patient pays the doctor personally for all the costs, including the cost to rent the OR.

Its a really interesting system. Clearly, most Costa Ricans use the public option, which provides excellent free medical treatment, you just may have to wait a little longer. It is nice to see that the country has both options available to those who want them.

worms

We got the results from the caca samples we collected from the kids in la casona. Out of the 94 samples collected, only 17 did not have parasites. 47 had intestinal worms, and 61 had protozoans (like giardia, amoebas, etc.)

All the kids received treatment for their worms and hopefully will continue to wash their hands like we taught them to.

SPRING BREAK

I have been SO bad about updating. There will be many in the next few days, I promise.

OK! So for spring break, I had initially had the idea that I would do a lot of traveling, and get to see different parts of Costa Rica. BUT our program does SO much traveling, that by the time spring break came around, the last thing we wanted to do was think about buses, and luggage, and hotels, and logistics. So instead, we did an entire week of nothing.

We (linda, jessie, tyler, and I) took a misearble 6 hr bus (the only traveling thank god) to playa flamingo in guanacaste, where we arrived at our beach side, air conditioned condo.spring break went something like this:

sleep in. watch tv. go to beach. go to pool. eat plantains. sit on couch. go to sleep. repeat x7.

It was a wonderful way to spend our break and i think we all returned pretty well rested and having eaten way too many plantains.

I actually didnt take any pictures unfortunately. So you will have to use your imagination.