Original subtitles

when a viral outbreak or dangerous

bacteria threatens human life

the CDC's disease detectives are often

on the front lines they go in prepared

for anything because the diseases they

study like Ebola hantavirus Marburg

monkey pox and anthrax are some of the

deadliest on earth my name is Brian

Amman I'm a disease ecologist with Viral

special pathogens branch here is the

Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention my job essentially is to go

out into areas where an outbreak has

occurred capture animals and test these

animals for ZOA notic viruses

specifically for the ones that have

caused the outbreak probably the most

notable are Ebola and Marburg hantavirus

and are some of the rain of viruses that

occur here in the United States now I'm

gonna tell you about some of the stuff

that I take out into the field this is a

harp trap it's called a harp trap

because it looks like a harp you can see

these fishing this fishing line attached

to the top and the bottom but these are

designed to catch bats and you can put

them in front of caves or in flyaways

and the bats will come and they'll hit

these lines and they'll get caught in

between here and it kind of messes with

their flight and they sort of tumble

down in to this catch bag down here

where you can reach in and pull them out

we catch bats because we test them for

diseases we know they carry a variety of

diseases some of which cause very severe

illnesses in humans I have here a little

GPS tracker this tracker is designed to

go on to the back of a bat and what this

will do is this will tell us where the

bat goes at night now the reason we're

doing this is because we think that the

bats that have Marburg virus are going

out and they're going into farmers

cultivated fruit crops they like mangoes

they like bananas they'll give it a

little bite if they don't like it they

drop it on the ground and the next day

or the next morning some child or some

family pet comes along and eats that

fruit and becomes infected with Marburg

virus it could very easily start the

next outbreak so by knowing where these

bats go at nighttime we can actually

essentially build a risk map we can get

the message out that hey don't pick

fruit up off the ground if it's been bit

and leave it alone these are our powered

air respirator filters we like these

because instead of wearing caving helmet

with the half or a full face face yield

we can use these but this is a helmet

it's very industrial if you bang your

head you're not going to fill it it's

extremely comfortable but you just

simply strap this on to your waist put

that on your head and you're good to go

this bag right here you can see it's

kind of a backpack and it's designed

actually to be a scuba diving bag now

one of the first things that go on our

snake chaps because when you're out

walking around in the jungle and I've

done this many times you you tend to

step closer or almost on a lot of

venomous snakes and these snake chaps or

Kevlar lines so that if anything bites

the outside of this they won't go

through and penetrate your pants and

then your leg these are the snake

gaiters that we wear when we're hiking

around in the jungle they're a lot

shorter than the cave snake chaps that

we wear but these are all much more

comfortable to walk around in steamy hot

jungles with that they're pretty simple

to put on the the snake chaps that we

wear in the cave will actually extend

all the way up past your hip because

there's a good potential of walking past

a rock ledge and having the snake come

out and give you a strike in your leg

and this is a half face respirator and

the reason we use these instead of

Packers out of the net is the poppers

can tend to be pretty heavy and if

you're walking several kilometres

between each net that can deck entire

area tire you out especially in the heat

and the humidity of the rainforests the

way you put these on you simply put it

over your face like this and then hook

it up and that provides a good seal and

when you couple that with the face

shield now you're talking practically

the same kind of protection you would

get out of a chopper one of the most

important pieces of our personal

protective equipment are these gloves

they're turtle skin New York City

Department of Corrections gloves they

have a Kevlar lining and this gives us

still some dexterity to take bats out of

gnats or to take them out of the case

but their bite resistant so the bats can

bite you with these gloves on and not go

through now some of the things that we

put in here that I don't have with me

are probably the most important is a

bottle spray bottle filled with micro

chem

and micro cam is a viral Seidel

detergent that we use as a disinfectant

every time we take a bat out of the net

we will spray ourselves off starting

with our hands we go all the way up our

arms we spray the face shield everything

including the gown all the way down to

our boots just on the off chance that if

we did get something on us and we didn't

notice it and it potentially has virus

in it that we hit it with this

disinfectant and it kills any kind of

virus so that we don't take it back to

the vehicles we don't accidentally touch

it with our hands and put it in our

mouth so everything gets sprayed off

each and every time I always take my own

towel in the more rural areas towels are

typically washed and then hung over

bushes to dry and during this drying

process there's a little fly called a

tumbu fly or a mango fly that lays its

eggs on the wet cloth and once you put

that egg on your body it hatches and

burrows into your skin

now if the towels aren't ironed then the

egg isn't destroyed and it stays on the

towel until you use it on your body to

dry off so I always take my own towels

because I don't trust that people iron

their towels last but not least I always

take this journal and I essentially

write notes and letters home to my sons

when I'm out there I've got several

years of of outbreak responses and field

research all written down in here for my

boys to read when they're old enough to

understand and appreciate what's been

going on these past years when I've been

leaving for three and four weeks at a

time we don't always have reliable

cellular service we don't have email

contact and a lot of times it can be

days before I get to speak with them and

by me writing to them it makes me feel

like I'm talking to them and it helps me

deal with some of the homesickness that

I experienced when I leave my boys

behind what I hope that they get out of

it is a sense of adventure and knowing

that their dad was at least out there

trying to do something good for somebody

somewhere this is some of the equipment

that I use out in the field

it helps me complete my work and it

helps me complete it safely

by I'm Ryan Wallace and I'm a veterinary

Abedini ologist with the US Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention and this

is what I bring with me when I go into

the field when I go out we're often

called on responses to aggressive

potentially rabid animals and walk long

distances to try to find them and the

people they've bitten and so we have to

be able to carry everything with us on

our backs to make sure we can properly

assess those animals and the people that

have been rabies is a virus it's the

deadliest disease in the world about a

99.9 percent fatality rates if you were

to get it about fifty nine thousand

people every year do die from rabies

most of the animals that bite people

don't have rabies luckily here in the

United States rabies has been eliminated

from our dog population but we do still

have to deal with it in numerous

wildlife species we sit in an office and

wait for somebody to call us and say

there is a rabid animal in their

neighborhood at that point we have to

have everything ready to go that we

would possibly need to keep ourselves

safe capture that animal assess it for

rabies and then be able to provide

recommendations to the person who's

exposed so we'll start with the backpack

we have a throw net like I said these

rabid dogs do not like to sit still

sometimes they're running away from us

sometimes they're running towards us

this net can be useful to try to

restrain that animal so we can come up

and give it a better assessment we're

out doing vaccinations and we vaccinated

an animal and we need to give it a mark

so that we don't vaccinate it again

tomorrow

well sometimes use the squirt gun just

to give it a little paint on the side

that way we know this animal isn't

vaccinated if we do unfortunately have

to euthanize or sedate an animal these

are our medications our needles and our

syringes dogs bite for all sorts of

reasons it's actually rarely due to

rabies it's because we got too close to

it or we antagonized it over food

improver those instances we can provide

a chain to the owner and ask them to

keep the dog chained up for 10 days and

if that animals still healthy after 10

days that means it didn't have rabies

that is what's in my backpack when we go

out when we train staff we usually start

with a dummy our dummy today is Seamus

I'm gonna show you on Sheamus how we use

a few pieces of equipment this is the

Catchpole easiest way to do it is to

just put in front of the animal with a

little bit of food they'll put their

head in front of it and then you just

slip it over slip it over like this and

then lightly close it if Sheamus was

really aggressive our goal is to get her

in a prone position and sedated as soon

as possible in that case we're gonna put

her down to the ground and one of our

other veterinarians will come up and

give an injection that'll put her to

sleep and then we can safely assess her

and the whole situation these are

absolutely critical to any rabies

investigation these are bite proof

gloves I have had dogs hanging off of my

hand biting me up in the air they can't

get through these if we can't get that

close to the dog maybe it's running away

or it's very aggressive and we don't

feel comfortable approaching it we can

use a blowgun

here's our blowgun the dart gets loaded

into here and then you can shoot it out

at this end from a safe distance so

normally would be about 15 to 20 feet

away you would aim at the dog and that

dart would have hit the dog right into

the muscle injecting the medication and

after a few minutes we can come up and

safely assess that animal try to decide

if it has rabies or not this equipment

keeps me safe keeps the animals safe it

allows us to take rabid animals out of

the communities thereby keeping all the

people safe as well my name is Sarah

guardo and I am a disease detective with

the division of high consequence

pathogens and pathology a disease

detective is someone that spends their

time trying to track down different

types of diseases so what we're looking

for is patterns and behavior and that

could be related to food or water or

even interaction with animals a lot of

the work that we do requires gear so if

you forget your gear for work then you

will not be able to complete the task so

now I'm going to show you a typical

trunk that we use to transport field

supplies and different types of gear we

can have up to 15 trunks in a single

trip boots classic tent always helpful

to bring with you because sometimes

you're not sure where you're gonna be

sleeping this is really cool this is a

a UV based water filter you can take off

the cover here make sure it's got its

batteries in it and you put it in dirty

water and you push the button and a lamp

comes on with UV light and the UV light

will actually kill any kind of viruses

or bacteria or protozoa

that are in the water so this is really

neat we also bring blood collection

supplies tourniquets they're very

helpful for blood collection gloves that

are you know used for a variety of

different purposes so this is a cold box

we use this in the field to transport

specimens and the way it works is that

you would actually have to freeze the

entire box for a certain period of time

for several hours and then once you're

in the field you place the specimens in

here and it's actually kept cold for up

to 72 hours which is really cool I also

haven't here five different types of

phone including a personal phone a CDC

work phone

another type of CDC phone which tends to

get better reception I also have a local

phone and lastly we have a satellite

phone and this thing is pretty cool we

also have the CDC medical kit the

medications you might find in here

include antibiotics like flagyl or cipro

they're also anti malarial pills in here

that you have to take once a day iodine

for sterilizing any kind of open wound

and water purification tablets so there

are different types of personal

protective equipment or PPE

for different situations so it depends

on what activities you're doing one

example here is a Tyvek suit that I

brought

make sure you got it all the way around

you and they need you want to zip it up

also have a face shield just helpful to

make sure that nothing is splashing in

your face and then of course gloves and

you're ready to get to work I'm Clint

Morgan I'm a biologist with the pox

virus and rabies branch our fieldwork

looks a little different than some

epidemiology fieldwork we're actually

going and trapping animals and sampling

them with hopes that they may have some

of these viruses that we're looking for

so monkey pox is a virus that's very

closely related to smallpox it can kill

up to ten percent of people who are

infected with it it was first recognized

in the in the 50s when it infected some

monkeys so then they named it monkey pox

because it was first isolated from these

these monkeys the viruses usually comes

from rodents and so we need certain

traps to catch these animals to test

them for the virus and relay that

information back to epidemiologists who

deal with the outbreak response here

this is a cage style live trap me open

it up real quick and in Africa this is

good for squirrels or Gambian pouched

rats which are the animals that we think

are the primary carriers of monkey pox

virus you open up the the front this

little part here is called the trail

comes up and we put the bait in the back

hopefully the animal will walk in

wanting to get the bait step on this the

door and the front will close and you

have caught your animal and here we have

these smaller live traps and go in just

pull one out for now alright and this is

this kind of trap is perfect for smaller

animals like small rodents and shrews

they just run in the front boom and

they're captured this is rolled oats and

peanut butter when combined is a really

good really good mixture to attract most

most rodents in any part of the world

also bird seed and even some vanilla

extract

works well for rodents in the tropics

and so we actually use a machete a lot

to cut through the forest undergrowth

and stuff where we're set trying to set

up the traps another really important

item for biosafety and protecting

yourself is a papper which stands for

powered air purifying respirator so what

it does it sucks in the air through this

filter in the front it'll pump it up

through this hose and into the mask

which which you'll be wearing and so

this hood will just go over your head

like so this way I'm breathing in the

air that's being filtered this paper is

very important if there's some kind of

biological contaminant in the area or

you're doing direct handling of infected

samples or animals take this off and in

this bag we just have some little things

that we use when we're processing the

animals this is a spring scale so when

we need to take a weight of the animal

we just use this little alligator clip

clip on to it and it gives us a weight

and some alcohol pads just some general

items that we use for sample processing

and once we get all the samples we need

we need to store them and that's where

this comes in this is a liquid nitrogen

tank it's a referred to as a dry shipper

we charge this with liquid nitrogen a

few days in advance before we go into

the field and it's good for about two

weeks afterwards let me pull this top

off and this is a nitrogen gas coming

out we actually use pantyhose of all

things because it can go down into

liquid nitrogen and it's easily

retrievable afterwards just put our

tubes and just drop it in that way the

samples are very cold and this little

tab hangs out so once you collect blood

from an animal you set those tubes into

this mini centrifuge and that will

separate out the serum which is a

component of the blood which will tell

you whether it has been exposed to

monkey pox or not and what we're looking

for is the

presence of antibodies and some of the

places we go don't have electricity and

so a portable generator like this or

something similar is very important to

power the items that we have so that's

the gear that we use we need every

single part of it to accomplish our goal

of going on to the field capturing the

animals bringing those samples back to

the lab getting some more information

about this virus and ultimately save

lives