By Martha Bebinger, September 24, 2020, WBUR.
It was low tide on the North Shore of Boston when Steve Kearns felt the mosquito bite that would land him in a hospital with West Nile Virus disease for a week.
“For at least six months after that, I felt like every five minutes I was being run over by a truck,” Kearns says. “I couldn’t work, I couldn’t walk very well, and I couldn’t focus. I wondered for a bit if I’d ever get better.”
Kearns recounts the experience during a check-up with his physician, Dr. Gaurab Basu and Dr. Charlotte Rastas, a third year resident in primary care at a Cambridge Health Alliance clinic in Somerville. Kearns, who is 71, has made a lot of progress in the nearly two years since he was bitten. He can manage about five hours at his job, building custom windows and doors, and he’s back to a beloved pastime: reading.
As Basu learned, rising temperatures offer longer breeding seasons for mosquitos, boost the virus replication rate, and make mosquitos more active. Basu has added these and other effects of climate change to an elective course he offers residents.
In doing so, he’s part of a nascent effort to make sure climate change is part of the curriculum in hospital residency programs across the country. There’s already a push, backed by the American Medical Association, to teach medical students about health risks tied to a warming planet. Now some doctors say that education should continue during residency, when doctors tailor what they’ve learned to a specialty.
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