With Dr. CerdaNo, even though I am currently living in the country with the highest number of cases relative to the size of its population, I do not have the swine flu :) I'm only studying it. Along with one other Northwestern undergrad (the girl standing next to me), I am working to create a more holistic picture of the swine flu epidemic here in Chile.
Primarily archival work, we are tracking the progression of the virus (number of cases and deaths) and the actions the Chilean government is doing to combat and manage it using health reports from WHO, PAHO, and MINSAL (Chile's Ministry of Health). From here, we're going to create an epidemic curve (a graph of the new cases ocurring daily) and calculate the lethality and mortality rates. These rates and graph will then be compared to those of other countries (right now, we are thinking the US, Germany, and England) to see if the epidemic in Chile is following the same pattern as elsewhere in the world. We're also hoping to gather information about each person who has died from the virus from El Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper, to see if we can find any interesting trends and correlations between the prevalence of the virus and other variables like socio-economic status, race, geographic location, etc.
The work can be a bit tedious at times since we've had to sift through over 170 health reports (like this). But, overall, it has been very interesting-Epidemiology 101. Our supervisor, Dr. Jaime Cerda, has been a lot of fun as well. At times, he is more concerned with us having a good time in Chile than he is with our projects :) Today, he even offered to give us a personal tour of Santiago's Plaza de Armas. I'm excited to learn from him and to see what we find.
Y, otra vez, no se preocupe: the swine ain't mine.
Yet.
(Kidding :) )
Primarily archival work, we are tracking the progression of the virus (number of cases and deaths) and the actions the Chilean government is doing to combat and manage it using health reports from WHO, PAHO, and MINSAL (Chile's Ministry of Health). From here, we're going to create an epidemic curve (a graph of the new cases ocurring daily) and calculate the lethality and mortality rates. These rates and graph will then be compared to those of other countries (right now, we are thinking the US, Germany, and England) to see if the epidemic in Chile is following the same pattern as elsewhere in the world. We're also hoping to gather information about each person who has died from the virus from El Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper, to see if we can find any interesting trends and correlations between the prevalence of the virus and other variables like socio-economic status, race, geographic location, etc.
The work can be a bit tedious at times since we've had to sift through over 170 health reports (like this). But, overall, it has been very interesting-Epidemiology 101. Our supervisor, Dr. Jaime Cerda, has been a lot of fun as well. At times, he is more concerned with us having a good time in Chile than he is with our projects :) Today, he even offered to give us a personal tour of Santiago's Plaza de Armas. I'm excited to learn from him and to see what we find.
Y, otra vez, no se preocupe: the swine ain't mine.
Yet.
(Kidding :) )
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