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| La Biofabrica |
After taking a slightly tangential detour in Jaltenango de la Paz, I’ve resumed my work in El Equipo de Sueño — El Equipo de Zancudo Estéril con Dra. Ariane, Ana Laura y César y mucho más. After our last reunión in Rio Florido, we had a gathering in the Biofabrica yesterday, which went well. And we have a meeting with the women of Ejido Hidalgo tomorrow. It’s an action-packed week!
The Biofabrica is a special place where the sterile mosquitos will be grown. They are currently refining the techniques of rearing males of the Aedes egyptii vector species. Males are selected based on the size of their pupa using water chromatography. The reason we want males is that they do not bite, so they cannot be a vector. By releasing sufficient quantities of sterile males into the environment, the females should be "occupied" in exchanges that result in no offspring to an extent that the population goes down, and the incidence of diseases like Dengue go down.
The Biofabrica is a special place where the sterile mosquitos will be grown. They are currently refining the techniques of rearing males of the Aedes egyptii vector species. Males are selected based on the size of their pupa using water chromatography. The reason we want males is that they do not bite, so they cannot be a vector. By releasing sufficient quantities of sterile males into the environment, the females should be "occupied" in exchanges that result in no offspring to an extent that the population goes down, and the incidence of diseases like Dengue go down.
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| Separation by size... water sprayed at the top Female pupa are the largest Male pupas are in the middle Larvae are the smallest |
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| Me in the Biofabrica |
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| Mosquito Life Cycle |
As you may recall from my past post Community Meeting at Rio Florido, two areas I focused on for improving were (1) the question over when should someone with suspected Dengue go to the hospital, and (2) how to generate more dialogue among the group during these meetings. Later, during discussions with Dr. Ariane and Ana Laura, we noticed that more men were speaking up (among those who did speak up) than women. And I offered an idea: what if we had a meeting just for women? And now that’s happening, and I’m in charge of an activity. Oh god, what have I done?
The activity I’m leading tomorrow consists of splitting up the women from Ejido Hidalgo into small groups of 4-5 people and discussing things they like, dislike, don’t understand, or would like to see implemented in order to improve our project. I will start with an icebreaker of talking about our favorite color. I’m excited, scared, and ready to give it my all!
Also, with help, I prepared a handout guide for when to go to the hospital, in response to the lengthy Q&A session we had on this topic at our last meeting. It can be scary or confusing when a member of the family is sick. By collaborating with Dra. Romero and the rest of our equipo, we were able to come up with this table that hopefully clears things up a bit:
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| Draft of handout I made on when to go to the hospital if you have symptoms of Dengue Fever |
That's all for now. Today I thought I finished my blog post summarizing my trip to Jaltenango but it got deleted, so I'll have to rewrite that from scratch. But in the meantime, there's a lot going on in Tapachula, and I'm grateful to be able to play a small role in this public health project.
Salud para la gente!
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| Tree in the middle of the road near my house in Tapachula |
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