University of Ghana

NAMRU-3 has a detachment in Ghana that is currently running studies in acute febrile illness and leishmania but will most likely begin work in acute respiratory infection, diarrheal disease and zoonotic pathogens in the very near future. So I've been in Ghana this week working with the local team to get set up for all these upcoming studies.

The detachment is housed within the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) which is part of the University of Ghana, so tonight, after a long day in the office and the laboratory, one of the Ghanaian professors with whom we were working invited us to join him for a drink. He's the head of one of the five colleges within the university (the University of Ghana is set up on the Oxford model) so we joined him at the faculty lounge of his college. After a brief tour of the college, we sat back and relaxed with he and several other faculty members.
There were a few things that made this experience - which would have been completely normal in Rwanda or any other African country - noticably different from any situation one could imagine in Egypt:

1. It was quiet and peaceful, and we were surrounded by greenery.
   
2. Everyone around the table was drinking beer.
3. We (by which I mean myself and my colleague, Lisa) sat down at a table of seven men (all Ghanaian except one) and no one batted an eye or treated us as though we were any different from any of them.

It was perfectly lovely.

Seatd

This was the sign on the seat in front of me on my flight today:
Although I'm used to seeing misspellings on signs and trucks and flyers and papers, and I can usually accept these mistakes with the excuse that English isn't the author's first language, I found this one disconcerting. I mean, if you're not even checking your spelling when you put the airplane together, what else are you ignoring?

H1N1 in Egypt

The Egyptian government announced today that the first case of H1N1 in Egypt has been confirmed. An Egyptian-American girl traveling to Egypt to spend the summer with her family was stopped at the airport (apparently they're checking the temperature of everyone who arrives and quarantining those with fever) and tested positive for the virus.

In my opinion, though, it was only a matter of time before the virus made its way into Egypt, and, really, I'm not convinced this is the first case to enter the country. It's just the first case the government has identified. I do feel a sense of relief though. After the scandalous rumors a couple months ago about NAMRU-3 being responsible for bringing H5N1 to Egypt, I'm glad the Egyptian government found the new virus before we did so we can shirk any responsibility for its introduction to the country and, for that matter, to the continent.

A baby named Khaled

A couple days ago, I decided to take my visiting friends to one of the large hotels downtown for drinks on the rooftop bar overlooking the Nile at sunset. The view is impressive and I was excited to share it with them, so I was thoroughly disappointed when we found out the bar was closed for a special event later that night. Sadly, we took the elevator back to the ground floor and hopped in a taxi to go elsewhere.

After only about a minute or two in the taxi, though, our driver's cellphone rang. He had a quick conversation in Arabic and then turned around to us with a huge grin on his face and shouted "Wife! Baby boy!" It didn't take much to realize that his wife had just had a baby boy. We asked a few questions and found out that this was his third child (but the first boy), that his wife was at Ain Shams Hospital (one of the hospitals we partner with for research studies) and that he would go to see her as soon as he dropped us off. We then asked what the baby's name would be and were shocked by his response:

"Name the baby!"

We assumed there had been a misunderstanding and quickly assured him that we were not trying to name his child. But he would have none of it.

"Name the baby!"

Suddenly I was panicked. Even though he was clearly in a great mood, I didn't think we shouldn't be the ones naming the baby.

"Name the baby!"

What if he didn't like the name we picked? Did he want an English name or an Arabic name?

"Name the baby! Mohamed, Ahmed, Mahmoud, Khaled..."

Thankfully he made it clear that he wanted an Arabic name. So I spoke up and suggested that the child's name be Khaled. My friends agreed that it was a good name and our taxi driver was thrilled. Immediately he was back on the phone, calling his wife and friends with more Arabic conversations from which I could only pick out small pieces. But those few pieces definitely included "Americans in the car" and "his name is Khaled".

We had actually named the baby.

E-bulletin on Djibouti

I just found out that the April issue of NAMRU-3's e-bulletin (which of course came out in April, but I'm only just now seeing) focuses on Djibouti. Check it out here for a few pictures and a better understanding of some of the initial work we're doing in the country.