Tagged: Health

Mosquitoes get West Nile Virus from birds, and then they give it to us. It’s Ryan Naujoks's job to stop that. He works for Dragon Mosquito Control, a private company that municipalities like Derry hire to spray insecticides.

"I’m at Rider Field right now, and everything is locked up," Naujoks says over the phone. "Rider Field…"

Eventually, someone from the Town of Derry comes and unlocks the gates. Naujoks fires up the sprayer.

The truck makes a lap around the field emitting a small puff of white smoke.

Health officials announced today that a Manchester resident has been infected with West Nile Virus.

It’s the first confirmed infection since September, 2010 in New Hampshire.

West Nile Virus first appeared in the state in 2000. Since then, four other humans have contracted the mosquito-borne virus.

National data from the CDC shows that the number of confirmed cases has risen dramatically in recent weeks.

There have also been 41 deaths; more than half in the state of Texas, where over 500 cases have been reported.

State health officials say they’ve confirmed another case of hepatitis C related to the outbreak at Exeter Hospital, bringing the total number of infected patients to 32.

In a statement today, the Department of Health and Human Services says the patient in question was admitted to Exeter Hospital’s cardiac catheterization lab before suspect David Kwiatkowski began working there. But they say the patient was released after Kwiatkowski started his job as a technician.

A list of the top-ten most-read stories on nhpr.org and StateImpact- NH website.

The story of  a medical technician charged with infecting at least thirty people at Exeter Hospital has turned into a national concern, with news he’d worked in a half-dozen other states, where hospitals are now checking their records and contacting patients.  We’ll get an update and look at what we’ve learned from this crisis so far.

Guests

The investigation continues into the Hepatitis C outbreak at Exeter Hospital is moving to several other states. This week officials at a hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York, are testing about 25 patients who underwent procedures at the time technician David Kwiatowski worked there.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a science journalist, author, and blogger for Boing-Boing, where she usually writes about the convergence of science and technology with culture. But it was a blog she posted recently, which diverged from her typical subject matter, which prompted us to ask her to return as a guest to the program.