Weeks 8-10 At the PDPH

 As I am closing my time a the Department of Public Health in Philadelphia, I find that I have grown quite fond of the work done at the Vector Control sector. While not always glamorous (many mosquito bites and one too many ticks hitching a ride on us) I find that active field work- rain or shine- is exactly what I enjoy doing. 

Throughout the program we have done various things to aid in the collection, identification, and record keeping of disease spreading mosquitos. I learned how to take dips, which involved collecting samples of mosquito larvae in stagnant water in order to identify the types of mosquitos present in an area. Furthermore, I learned how to set and collect BG and Gravid traps, which focus on attracting and capturing human-seeking and gravid mosquitos respectively. And most importantly, I learned essential skills including but not limited to how to handle critical disease carrying organisms, how to process and take record of said organisms, and how to properly convey results without revealing confidential information.


Image of a Culex mosquito egg raft taken at 10x zoom

Moreover, we made great efforts to treat a community garden just last week and I am looking forward to one day aiding community gardens in the future. With my pesticide applicator license, I was able to treat rain barrels and stagnant bodies of water too large to dispatch through mechanical means. I was able to learn how to properly communicate vector safety with residents and gardeners by showing gardeners how to cover their rain barrels with mesh covers. In doing so, I was able to spread knowledge on health safety and how everyone can do their  parts to maintain it.  


I also learned how to be quick on my feet and efficient with repairs when our traps broke out on the field. 


Image of repaired BG Sentinel trap out on the field


Make-shift container for a broken mosquito collection box 

I am immensely grateful for the opportunity that I have been given by both Cornell and the Philadelphia Department of Public health this summer. I will take with me the skills and experience gained here and use it in future career endevors

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yuliia Skrypniuk - Week 10 with DNREC Fish and Wildlife Division

Image
     I can’t believe it’s already the final week of my internship! This week was full of fieldwork, learning, and some exciting last activities with both the tick and mosquito teams.      At the start of the week, I joined the tick team to visit three parks in northern Delaware for flag dragging. While tick numbers were low, we still managed to collect some Ixodes scapularis larvae (commonly known as deer ticks), which are important to track because they can carry Lyme disease.      On Tuesday, I joined the mosquito team for a boat trip out to the salt marshes. We checked water levels, monitored for mosquito larvae, and looked for adult mosquitoes to make sure everything was within acceptable levels. After lunch, we visited two more parks to collect ticks and monitor tick activity there as well.      Wednesday was all about mosquito trap collection. I spent the day with one of the seasonal workers, driving to different trap loc...
Read more

Joseph Fiscella: Week 10 at Suffolk County Vector Control

Image
This week was the tenth and final week of my internship at Suffolk County Vector Control, and it truly feels like the summer flew by. On Monday and Tuesday, we wrapped up our vegetation sampling at two additional marsh sites. There was not a huge amount of diversity in the species we found this week compared to last week, but there were some grids this week that contained Phragmites, a tall reed grass commonly found along the edges of the marshes. While the heat and humidity this week did make the vegetation sampling tough work, it was still enjoyable to participate in new methods of population surveillance. Our last outing of the summer was on Thursday. Vector Control was informed of areas in Patchogue, NY that had high mosquito numbers. We had never been to the site before, so it was a bit of investigative work. While we barely found any mosquito larvae in our dips, the sheer number of adult mosquitoes flying around was overwhelming. This, alongside the unevenness of the marsh floor,...
Read more

Joseph Fiscella: Week 9 at Suffolk County Vector Control

Image
This week marked our final week of tick sampling. The interns and I went to all three of our tick sites on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday for one last round of sampling for the season. As expected, the number of tick larvae was considerably high, but this was not a surprise since we have been collecting a lot of larvae for the past several weeks. To review, the two ticks that we find the most at our grids are the deer tick ( Ixodes scapularis ) and the lonestar tick (Amblyomma americanum ). However, I came across something fascinating on Tuesday after we took the samples back to the lab in order to confirm the tick counts. When I put some of the tick rolls under the microscope, I noticed that some of the larvae were shaped like the deer tick but had a slightly lighter coloration and less prominent mouth pieces (palpi). I called over one of my supervisors, Moses, for assistance. He determined that the tick was of the genus Ixodes , but it was definitely not a deer tick. The microscope I wa...
Read more