All In A Week's Work

It's been an exciting week at work! There's been security briefings and clinic visits! But before I get ahead of myself, let me explain what it is I'm doing here in Guatemala.

This summer I'm working as an intern for CDC-GAP or CDC-Global Aids Program. Our office works with the Universidad de Valle de Guatemala (UVG) and all the people at my office are UVG staff/faculty. The office coordinates all the HIV programs for Central America and some of the Caribbean. We focus on communities with people identifying as MSM (men who have sex with men), transgender (mostly male-to-female for our office), or FSW (female sex workers). In Latin America, these three communities have a disproportionately higher risk of acquiring HIV compared to other populations.

Clinic in Zona 3

So what do I do? One of the roles I find myself in, that I wasn't expecting, is translator. I'm one of two people in the office who is a native English speaker. As a result, I end up translating a lot of emails and documents that are in Spanish into English for the CDC-Atlanta office. Needless to say, my reading skills in Spanish are greatly improving. My other job is point-person (kind of) for a intervention/protocol we are going to implement in Guatemala City. Specifically, it is a multi-level intervention for MSM communities. The intervention helps foster community activism to raise awareness about HIV infection and safe sex practices. A second piece of the intervention focuses on increased HIV and syphilis testing within young MSM communities. All-in-all it's a good intervention (I can't take credit for that...I'm just writing the protocol based on someone else's ideas).

Medical cart with supplies the doctor might need

But on to this week's work...So this week I was really excited because I visited the two clinics that will be involved with this intervention. The first clinic was in Zona 3 (zones to be described in a later post) and focused on care for FSW, although care was provided for MSM and transgender persons. I have to say the clinic was kind of awesome! The clinic operated a medical care portion with physicians, psychologists, and pharmacists. There was also a laboratory portion, which was fully equipped to diagnose HIV, syphilis, hepatitis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and more. Best of all, the clinic operated an educational center where adults were trained to be lab technicians and children of low-income families could receive primary education! I also met the most incredible doctor, who allowed me to see patients with him (complete with a white coat they made me wear). Awesome way to remember something from the first year of med school!

The one exam room in Zona 4 Clinic

The second clinic was in Zona 4 and, unfortunately, had no doctor for the day so there weren't any patients. But the facilities were really nice. The focus for this clinic is MSM populations, but, like the other clinic, they see everyone.

Beyond the clinic visits, I also had a security briefing at the U.S. embassy this week. As a CDC intern, we're encouraged/required to attend one of these to learn a bit more about the dangers of Guatemala. I think it was my first time in a U.S. embassy so that was kind of exciting and what was a very helpful briefing.

And that's pretty much it for my week at work! On a side note, a colleague brought worms to work this week that make yogurt. All you do is place the worms in a glass with milk and in 24 hours you have really rich and yummy (so they tell me) yogurt...Something to think about until my next post!