Pandemic Pandemonium

Epidemiology was not my college major. The closest I got to the study of medicine was a psychology class I took in one of the med school buildings. And while I am trying to become a "doctor," the closest I got to "coding" was training people to watch movies. Not exactly a life-or-death activity.

Then I moved to Cambodia and began working with a relief and development organization whose main emphasis is (after supporting the church): health education. This means I hear a lot about preventing treatable diseases, transmission of AIDS and childhood vaccination. I even have to tell people about some of the health problems in Cambodia and occasionally provide advice on what medicines to take when volunteers come down with some minor illness. As far as medical care goes, this is pretty much as far down the road as I want to go.

But the whole world is up in arms over swine flu (and rightly so, I say), and I now live in a place just poised for a scene from the movie "Outbreak." People live in close quarters, they spit on the ground, they stand close to you, and "clean" is a word we use to mean "relatively safe to touch." My whole approach to germs has changed, from "eradicate" to "stave off as long as possible." And while swine flu hasn't yet arrived on our doorstep, as an organization that thinks about these sorts of health problems, we have to do things like prepare.

So today I learned where the TamiFlu is, and that we have 500 medical kits (gloves, masks, etc.) to use when giving someone the treatment. I know things like when the fever appears, and how many days the swine flu cycle is, and somehow, I am trying to do things like wash my hands often and avoid excessive germiness.

Sometimes I forget that things here are different than the places where I used to live. And then there are the days when it all comes rushing back to me. Today is one of those days.