And we're off!

After 8 days of training in Atlanta, STOP polio team 22 is all ready to go! We've been sent to all four corners of the world, to hunt down the last reservoirs of polio and eradicate it through immunizations. For people in public health, it doesn't get much better than this. Polio is about to join smallpox as the only disease to be wiped from existence.

STOP team 22-


Most of the team are from Africa, and have had years of experience in immunizations or have done STOP before. It's always a good sign when people want to volunteer for another STOP campaign! Like myself, some are not doctors or clinicians, why should they have all the fun and credit, hah!

Training was very comprehensive, some sessions were, umm... interesting. We had a UN security coordinator, a Belgium, talk to us about issues while in the field. "Jean-claude" gave an interesting briefing, until he starting diagramming ambushes on UN vehicles and giving tips on how to make them more effective by landmining the area where passengers were likely to run to. Yep, always a good thing to scare the hell out of people before they go abroad. Truthfully, the most dangerous thing abroad is not getting shot at (you probably have a greater chance of getting shot by driving through Oakland), kidnapped, or even getting some exotic diseases. It's being in a car accident.

We also had the privilege of sitting through a training session on counter-intelligence and espionage! The CDC is a bit more cautious now, understandbly with what some of the scientists are working on. He even told a story about how the Russian embassy tried to use an attractive waitress to compromise him. Personally, if an attractive Russian waitress tried to seduce me, I'd probably tell her all the state secrets on polio and syphilis that I know, hah!

Training was great though, and they gave us the little blue book, a UN passport, woo-hoo! I don't want to give it back...


Ok, the next update will be coming live and direct from Bangladesh!