Worker bee

I haven’t really spent any time telling you about the work I’m doing here in Indo. Until last month there wasn’t a whole lot to tell as the amount of work I was doing was pretty minimal and only mildly interesting. However, as of 3 weeks ago my workload has been bumped up to half-time and has become much more intense. On one hand I am struggling to keep it to 50% because I could be doing this full time right now, but on the other hand I’m doing this largely from home and with 2 little kids in the house it’s proving to be very challenging to find the time. Plus, I don’t even have to be working right now. There are other things I want to be doing and I have to readjust my state of mind and schedules to find the right balance.

The work is very interesting though, and important. As some of you may know, more cases of human Avian Influenza (bird flu) have occurred in Indonesia (113 to date) than anywhere else. Because of this and the great fear around the world of this disease becoming either efficiently transmitted from bird to human, or even worse from human to human, the US government (and others) is pouring quite a bit of money and resources into learning about the disease and containing it. This is where I come in. USAID has a contract with my company to procure various drugs and supplies to donate to developing countries. In 2006 they decided to send some decontamination kits and personal protective equipment to Indo to help protect investigators when they go out to investigate an outbreak among birds. So for the last several months I have been doing a little work to help bring those supplies into Indo and track their use and reorder when necessary.

Now, however, the US government has decided that vaccinating chickens against bird flu may help reduce the viral load in chickens and therefore help contain the disease. Well, there are 3 million chickens born every day in Indo. There are 17,000 islands in Indo. Complicated and overwhelming task? Yes! So, my project has been asked to procure the vaccines and get them down to the district level. They are only doing this in 6-8 districts in West Java, where 60% of the chickens are, so that makes things easier. I don’t think they realistically believe all chickens in Indo will ever be vaccinated. We can’t even get all children in Indo vaccinated, much less chickens! This task is further complicated by the fact that vaccines have to be stored at a certain cold temperature (4-8 degrees Celsius in this case) until they are used. This is a huge task in a tropical climate and developing country where electricity is not always ensured nor working refrigerators present in all locations. Therefore, we have to figure out how we’re going to get it there under the right conditions (cold chain logistics). Another complication to this already daunting task is the fact they don’t have a really efficacious vaccine. There are vaccines (for chickens, not for humans) and they work against some strains, but not against others. Being influenza, the virus is always mutating, so the powers that be will continuously have to monitor the ever changing virus strains (just like you have to get a new flu vaccine every year).

And seeing as I’m the only project employee living here, I will be doing much of the work dealing with the logistics of vaccinating a whole pant load of chickens. Plus I’m on a huge learning curve here. I do not know much about vaccines or chickens or cold chain logistics! It feels overwhelming, especially since this came as a huge surprise. Three weeks ago I had no idea I’d be thrown into this. I was going on my merry way thinking that come March or so I’d start drumming up some more work. And now I’ve got more than expected. Fortunately I'm working with some really great people who are doing other components of the work required to get this thing off the ground.

There are other things that have been added to my workload as well. Like organizing a workshop for the government's bird flu committee on emergency preparedness. Again, what? Zoinks scoob...

It’s exciting to be doing this work though. It’s an emerging disease and I’m living in the epicenter. I imagine I’ll gain a lot of expertise and will be at the forefront of what’s being done to combat it. The drawback though is that it’s taking me farther and farther away from my true passion of maternal and child health. That is what I got my master’s degree in, and yet my career so far has been related but not directly linked. But I do like it and it’s a good deal for me right now, and it’s certainly exciting!