Pulled in many ways all at once
So a couple of exciting things happened today- the surveillance group decided to go to Kanungu, which is a region of Uganda in the southwest, in a higher mountainous elevation, near Kibale National Park- apparently it's the most (or one of the most) beautiful places in Uganda. Somewhere in the area there is suppsed to be a lake that lies in the remains of some volcanic remains (safe to swim in apparently) and an island in the middle of the lake, with a resort too... Kanungu, however, is pretty far away from Kampala (8-10 hours).
So I was all set to go with Yeka, Hasifa, and Shereen at 6:30 the next day, when we realized that some other people from the Infectious Disease Institute (Gisela and a co-worker of hers) wanted to go see the Apac site, and someone had to show them around... and after a lot of calls and discussion, we finally got Gisela's group to come to Kanungu as well. The only problem with that was that they could only come on Sat-Mon... meaning that my trip to Kanungu would be from tomorrow (thurs) to monday.
Which would have been fine, except for Art Reingold, my main advisor at UC Berkeley, is arriving tonight around midnight, and will be here till next tuesday. That put me in a pretty tight spot- Kanungu is a brand new surveillance site, and it would be great to be there personally to help start it all up, and in addition to that, there's a President's Malaria Initiative funded group headed by Linda Quick who just did some Indoor Residual Spraying (you spray the inner walls of houses before rainy seasons and in key times of year, and the mosquitoes that land on sprayed surfaces die- mosquito nets are similar in action, only they hang over your bed instead of being glued to the walls). They really really wanted surveillance data from the Kibale region, where they sprayed, and since Kibale is close by and IRS's impact on malaria burden could be really interesting to look at with surveillance data, we wanted to set up 2 sites at once with this trip. However, Art's trip here is also really important, but in reality, it's unknown why he's coming here. He could be just coming to visit me and check up, or have meetings scheduled, or any number of things- vacation, sightseeing (all unlikely given how busy he is). He just never told anyone anything about the purpose of the trip.
In the end, I decided to not go with the group heading out tomorrow morning, but that I would go later this weekend (leave Sat, get there Sat night, then work Sun and come back Mon). Grant figures that if Art wants to go as well, he'd come and drive the entire group there, and if that happens, Aliza and Sam may also want to go- it'd be a big fun caravan.
After a day of chasing down printing parts and testing the feasibility of taking digital photographs of surveillance log books (as opposed to waiting for the periodic power to come on so we could photocopy the books at the site), we finally got things to work well enough that we'll continue to try to photograph (the images need to be focused better, but the printing out here at Kampala seems to be able to work well enough to read- additional advantages are less paper records to save, and less dependance on power, among other advantages).
Here are the photos I promised, and a few more:
Kasugi Tombs:
The ceiling of the Tombs:
The Malaria Symposium:
Shereen and Aliza, from left to right:
Some Doxycycline and Artesunate that I picked up for self-treatment, in case I break into mass fever and get malaria... (Artesunates are the big hot anti-malarial nowadays, newly arrived in some parts of Africa, very rapid clearance of parasites, great drug as far as we can tell- fantastic actually). Didn't get Coartem because of Heidi's recommendation, but Grant and Phil both said that they'd go for the Coartem. Maybe I'll pick one up for fun. Total cost: 14,000 USH- 1k for doxy, and 13k for artesunate, made in Belgium. Not sure if the plants are grown there, but the pills I suppose are made there:
So I was all set to go with Yeka, Hasifa, and Shereen at 6:30 the next day, when we realized that some other people from the Infectious Disease Institute (Gisela and a co-worker of hers) wanted to go see the Apac site, and someone had to show them around... and after a lot of calls and discussion, we finally got Gisela's group to come to Kanungu as well. The only problem with that was that they could only come on Sat-Mon... meaning that my trip to Kanungu would be from tomorrow (thurs) to monday.
Which would have been fine, except for Art Reingold, my main advisor at UC Berkeley, is arriving tonight around midnight, and will be here till next tuesday. That put me in a pretty tight spot- Kanungu is a brand new surveillance site, and it would be great to be there personally to help start it all up, and in addition to that, there's a President's Malaria Initiative funded group headed by Linda Quick who just did some Indoor Residual Spraying (you spray the inner walls of houses before rainy seasons and in key times of year, and the mosquitoes that land on sprayed surfaces die- mosquito nets are similar in action, only they hang over your bed instead of being glued to the walls). They really really wanted surveillance data from the Kibale region, where they sprayed, and since Kibale is close by and IRS's impact on malaria burden could be really interesting to look at with surveillance data, we wanted to set up 2 sites at once with this trip. However, Art's trip here is also really important, but in reality, it's unknown why he's coming here. He could be just coming to visit me and check up, or have meetings scheduled, or any number of things- vacation, sightseeing (all unlikely given how busy he is). He just never told anyone anything about the purpose of the trip.
In the end, I decided to not go with the group heading out tomorrow morning, but that I would go later this weekend (leave Sat, get there Sat night, then work Sun and come back Mon). Grant figures that if Art wants to go as well, he'd come and drive the entire group there, and if that happens, Aliza and Sam may also want to go- it'd be a big fun caravan.
After a day of chasing down printing parts and testing the feasibility of taking digital photographs of surveillance log books (as opposed to waiting for the periodic power to come on so we could photocopy the books at the site), we finally got things to work well enough that we'll continue to try to photograph (the images need to be focused better, but the printing out here at Kampala seems to be able to work well enough to read- additional advantages are less paper records to save, and less dependance on power, among other advantages).
Here are the photos I promised, and a few more:
Kasugi Tombs:
The ceiling of the Tombs:
The Malaria Symposium:
Shereen and Aliza, from left to right:
Some Doxycycline and Artesunate that I picked up for self-treatment, in case I break into mass fever and get malaria... (Artesunates are the big hot anti-malarial nowadays, newly arrived in some parts of Africa, very rapid clearance of parasites, great drug as far as we can tell- fantastic actually). Didn't get Coartem because of Heidi's recommendation, but Grant and Phil both said that they'd go for the Coartem. Maybe I'll pick one up for fun. Total cost: 14,000 USH- 1k for doxy, and 13k for artesunate, made in Belgium. Not sure if the plants are grown there, but the pills I suppose are made there:
posted by Vince at 11:37 AM
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