Second-year medical student Nicolas Ruiz shared photos of his experienceStudents from the UTMB Center for Global Health Education spent part of their summer studying chikungunya in the Dominican Republic with Scott Weaver, scientific director of the Galveston National Laboratory at UTMB.
Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne virus that causes fever, headache, muscle pain, joint swelling, and/or rash. Outbreaks originated in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but the virus has now made its way to U.S. soil.
“There is an ongoing febrile illness surveillance study (in the Dominican) which we hope will have domestic application as well,” said Dr. Matthew Dacso, director of the Center for Global Health Education.
Research fellow Rebecca Rubinstein was featured in a July Huffington Post article titled, “What these STEM college women are doing this summer,” for her work with the team.
What These STEM College Women Are Doing This Year
By Diane Propsner, Huffington Post
|
 Rebecca is spending her summer in La Romana, Dominican Republic, as a Center for Tropical Diseases Research Fellow with the University of Texas Medical Branch. Rebecca and her colleague Kaska Watson, collect and sort mosquitoes from various bateyes (i.e., housing communities) provided by sugarcane companies for their workers. UTMB is hoping to learn more about chikungunya, a virus new to the Western Hemisphere that is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Rebecca also interviews fever patients and collects blood samples at hospitals in La Romana. After she graduates, she wants to work in tropical medicine and epidemiology as a researcher or physician.
|