A Prescription to Treat My Own Bias by Caitlin Pollard

After waking up at La Selva Biological Research Station with double earaches and difficulty swallowing for the past few days, I decided it was time to head to a professional. Unfortunately, skipping out on our Zoonotic Diseases lecture, I headed into Puerto Viejo for a visit to the clinic. Remembering useful words like garganta (throat) and oído (inner ear), I rang the bell at the door of the first clinic, only to find that the doctor was “out” according to a nearby saleswoman. We drove to another clinic and this time, thankfully, I was greeted by a friendly receptionist. As the only person in the waiting room, the doctor soon came out and shook my hand. Measuring about an inch between his fingers, he said, “I know about this much English.” Measuring back about a foot between my hands, I replied with a laugh that I knew about “that much” Spanish.

            In the examination room, the doctor took a look in my ears and throat and began to explain that my ears were reacting to the change in climate, causing them to become inflamed. Using the fancy name “barotrauma,” he said it wasn’t that common, but that other travelers had previously come to him experiencing the same discomfort with their weak ears. With a prescription for three anti-inflammatories, I stopped at the pharmacy on the way home.

            Back at La Selva, I researched my diagnosis and looked up each prescription to see its equivalent in the United States. I began to reflect on the immediate doubts that I had initially regarding the diagnosis and the effectiveness of the prescriptions. I hadn’t even told my parents that I had gone to the clinic. I realized that, if I were back home, I would take my primary care physician’s advice with much less suspicion and wouldn’t have looked up my individual prescription names on Google. This was probably a healthy dose of skepticism that I should bring back home, but I noticed that I obviously had my own stigmatization against foreign healthcare systems. Yet ironically, I chose to study in Costa Rica because of the efficiency of its healthcare system. As a middle income country that falls below the United States on the Human Development Index, Costa Rica has a higher life expectancy than the U.S.,  makes much better use of its healthcare spending, and is focused on primary healthcare, the service that I had just used. And yet, here I was, with an unconscious bias that the United States’ healthcare system had to be more reliable. I’m thankful this program has already allowed me to start having a conversation about what truly constitutes a successful healthcare system and to question my own bias toward a health system that may not be the best in the world, despite what I’ve grown up believing.

 

Embracing Pura Vida by Andrea Cantalupa

At the Costa Rican Language Academy in San Jose, each member of the OTS Tropical Diseases course is taking a class in Costa Rican language and culture. Upon entering the classroom on the first day of class, my teacher immediately made sure that the class was familiar with the Costa Rican concept of “pura vida.” The phrase “pura vida” can be used in a variety of ways in Costa Rican culture, whether it be wishing someone well, saying thank you, hello, or goodbye. However, I have noticed that regardless of the context, the phrase “pura vida” is always used to express the positivity present in one’s life at a certain moment in time; that regardless of the circumstance, life is still good, life is still pure.

Prior to coming to San Jose, the OTS Tropical Diseases students spent much time discussing how the lifestyle that someone lives can impact their health. “Health” is not simply defined as the absence of disease, but is also influenced by one’s socio-economic status, working lifestyle, support of family and friends, and other social factors that influence one’s perception of oneself. It is upon learning this that I speculated that those living in low income communities, regardless of any diseases they have, may not be living a healthy lifestyle. However, after learning about the primary care system, it has amazed me that through the public sector in Costa Rica, people are able to have access to a wholesome, pura vida life.

Costa Rica has a universal healthcare system committed to aiding those who are most in need. To aid in preventing the spread of disease, doctors and nurses travel out into the community to make sure that each patient behind every door they knock on is provided with access to the care that they need. To further back up the determination of the healthcare system, a conversation with my host-sister (who is attending medical school at the public university in San Jose) informed me that, when the country’s women were facing issues of malnutrition, the healthcare system took action by fortifying all of the country’s foods with additional vitamins and minerals, and still do to this day.

As a result, I am not surprised that an integral part of Costa Rican culture is a phrase that encompasses the concept of wishing well and positivity. It is through the primary care system here that all people can have access to a life free of disease, but hopefully live with a sense of comfort and confidence that the healthcare system is going to take care of them. And when the system fails, as any system has the potential to, they are surrounded by a culture that lives pura vida, embracing a life of optimism and reinforcing a sense of security. 

Faculty-led research project on sex-biased parasitism in bats by Brenna Hynes

            During our third week at La Selva Biological Station we had the opportunity to participate in field work for three different faculty-led research projects. Between the three projects we got to conduct surveys, set traps, use equipment, and get a significant amount of hands-on experience. My personal favorite of the three projects was one that involved going out into the forest at night to net bats and tweeze parasites (ticks, mites, and flies) off of them. We did this so that we could determine whether or not parasites had a preference towards male or female bats.

My first question was “why is this important?”. Leith, our awesome and enthusiastic faculty member, explained to us that because male bats live solitarily and tend to fly a lot further away from the roost than female bats do, they are much more likely to come into contact with humans and pass on parasites (and the diseases that they may carry) to humans. That means that evaluating the differences in parasite patterns amongst female and male bats can tell us a lot about how threatening bats really are to people. If female bats are the ones with all the parasites the risk of bats spreading diseases to humans is low.  I thought that this was a really awesome example of how the environment can be connected to human health, which is one of the main themes of the program.

Our mentor, Leith Miller, restraining one of the bats we caught as part of our project.

I also just found this project to be really fun and interesting. Before this research project I would have never imagined myself getting this kind of experience working with bats. I knew very little about their dispersal patterns, importance to the ecosystem, unique qualities, habitat, and even their appearance because I had never had the opportunity to see one up close prior to this experience. Reading articles, talking to Leith, and getting some hands-on experience with bats has taught me so much about these animals. This project has made me more interested in interacting with and/or learning about other types of wildlife. There is an endless list of animal species that I know very little about and I would love to start crossing things off of it! I think that the upcoming three months will help me do this. I consider experiences such as these to be one of the most amazing things about going abroad to a country like Costa Rica. This type of learning cannot be done in a classroom in the United States.