The last few days

Since Monday I've been running around collecting medical, prison, and autopsy records from various sources for various prisoners. So far I've written up 5 men who've passed recently. None were quite as "complicated" as my first but we've still found the need for recommendations. One poor guy didn't receive an X-ray telling him he had metastatic lung cancer secondary to the brain for a full week and the prison finally received the results the day he passed.

Looking at the literature from our own prisons I can't say we're doing any better. I plan to compile the 30 something prison deaths in the last few years and compare how the island is doing in relation to the United States. It should be interesting because both countries (US in 1976, UK in 2003) have said that prisoners must be treated to the same standard as any other citizen and since we've had a few decades head start one would hope we have advice for our friends here.

Another exciting project has come my way courtesy of history/nature lover, Dr Bingham. He's a huge fan of Charles Darwin and apparently the evolutionist has ties to the island. Some of his relatives lived here and he began the Origin of Species here as well. The famous picture above was taken by a photographer on the island. Recent letters and manuscripts from Darwin's life and connections to the island were just found, and the history society and Paul want me to publish this in anticipation of the 150-year anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Not really medically related but baller nonetheless.

There was a suspected case of a meningococcal meningitis and public health had to check it out of course. We visited the poor girl, spoke with her doctor, and wrote down her recent contacts in case we needed prophylactic antibiotics. Luckily, it wasn't meningitis at all but cool to see that aspect of epidemiology.

Finally, we sat in on a meeting today to brief the local schools on the new HPV vaccination. They'll be administering it to all 12-16 year old girls in 3 doses at school which is different from how we do it. They also won't be using Gardasil and they're only country doing this. I didn't catch which one they are using but I know it won't have the added benefit of preventing genital warts. They're target given by the government is 90% vaccination of young girls and since it is in the schools we explored all the difficulties of reaching children in private schools, those not in schools at all, and those not attending school on the island.

My birthday is tomorrow so I'm off to find some good beer. Cheers mates!