Photo By Lt. Col. Charles An | U.S. Army Capt. Jose Jimenez, left, speaks to a multinational audience during the...... read more read more
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Washington – Capt. Jose Jimenez had a big smile looking out as he took the stage and stood behind the podium. All eyes and ears were on him, but this was not a regular audience.
Military generals and government medical professionals from a number of Middle East nations were in attendance, and they were ready to listen to Jimenez speak. But Jimenez is not a regular U.S. Army captain either; he is the preventive medicine officer on Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.
Jimenez spoke on Middle East Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus (MERS-CoV), and presented his current studies and results in the region at the Military Medical Security Symposium hosted by U.S. Army Central. The conference was here Aug. 18-22, 2014.
Dr. Mohammed Almarri, also a brigadier general in the Qatar armed forces and commander of their medical services, shared the stage with Jimenez on the topic.
“We know the family order, how it reproduces or replicates,” said Jimenez about MERS-CoV. “We know the size of it, which it is a very large virus, from 27 to 32 kilo base.”
Knowing about the virus was only part of the presentation, as questions of where MERS-CoV came from and how it gets transmitted were part of the discussion. This was a large part of the discussion as studies had shown that the virus could have emerged from contact with camels. This became an interesting topic as one of the audience members brought up the issue that most cultures within the region rejected this possible conclusion because of how camels play a large role in their civilization.
Another part of the discussion was the demographics of those infected by the virus. A large number of cases were younger adult males, and this brought up the reasons for why that demographic seemed to be the largest case of MERS-CoV. This was followed by the possibility of social activity that particular demographic group enjoyed: Sharing a hookah, an activity of smoking out of a large water pipe.
“We have two cases here in the United States, so for our part we are really looking at mitigation strategies to try to reduce the risk of MERS-CoV.”
MERS-CoV was only one of many topics during the weeklong conference as the biggest take away from the event was sharing information with each other.
“It was very helpful. It has opened my eyes to other things that would never have heard,” said Mohammed Almarri. “It has given me an insight on things we need to work on back home.”
“The most important is communication,” Almarri expressed on his biggest takeaway from the conference. “We know we have friends, which is the United States Army working with us.”
“I think we should work harder in utilizing what results that they have,” added Almarri.
“The idea was to come and participate with other nations, other medical professionals from different militaries of the area – the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf Region – and share and exchange information on the different infectious diseases, the different threats that you see from the medical side,” concluded Jimenez.
Jimenez has been in Kuwait since February 2014 to support the 3rd Medical Command Deployment Support, Operational Command Post (Forward), and is part of the Joint Services Infectious Disease Team. Jimenez has his doctorate from Virginia Tech University in systems and industrial engineering applied to health care acquired infections.
| Date Taken: | 08.20.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.12.2014 10:46 |
| Story ID: | 141924 |
| Location: | DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Web Views: | 183 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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