Health

Protecting the Public from Disease

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“If we can’t tell what it is, it must be investigated quickly.”

 

These might sound like the words of a detective at a crime scene, but they’re the words of disease detective Dr. Patricia McVay whose job it is to identify organisms that might sicken or kill people.

 McVay is the Director of the County’s Public Health Lab (PHL), which is one of two featured labs in the winter edition of Lab Matters, the quarterly publication of the national Association of Public Health Laboratories.

 “It’s a great honor because there are about 300 public health labs in the United States and Lab Matters only features eight per year,” said McVay.

Microbiologists at the lab can detect practically any organism, including avian flu, plague, norovirus, HIV, tularemia, rabies, drug-resistant tuberculosis and Pandemic H1N1 Influenza. When the County PHL can’t identify an organism, it immediately sends the specimen to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

 “We are taking advantage of new technology to protect the public from the spread of disease,” said McVay.

In fact, the PHL was critical in the identification of three of the first five cases of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. The lab’s work continued as the disease spread throughout the region. PHL staff tested more than 350 suspect influenza specimens  each week to determine if they were actual H1N1 cases.

The PHL processes more than 60,000 specimens and performs more than 100,000 tests each year. About 60 percent of the specimens come from the County’s public health clinics, and another 20 percent come from other County departments, including the Medical Examiner, the Department of Environmental Health and adult and juvenile detention facilities. The remaining 20 percent of specimens come from military partners, UC San Diego researchers and private hospitals and clinics.

In addition,  the PHL tests more than 1,500 water samples—drinking water, wastewater, and recreational water—per year. 

Add to that workload the County PHL is one of only five labs in the nation that receive specimens from Mexico, and it is also one of two labs in California  participating in the CDC’s Tuberculosis Cooperative Grant program.

“We are in such a unique location in the United States that the state and the CDC both rely on us heavily because we have a lot of capability of detection,” added McVay. “The community can rest assured that we can detect and protect them from potentially harmful organisms.”