The ship life is never dull… this week we have encountered an event that will make semester at sea history!  Today we had to make an emergency stop in order to distribute vaccinations to close to 100 students!!  Here’s the scoop… while in Brazil a group of kids spent a few nights in a jungle lodge in the Amazon. At the hotel there were 2  young domestic monkeys that lived there and would wander around and play with various guests.  All of the semester at sea kids met these monkeys and became fond of them. Apparently on little girl (a daughter of a faculty member on board) created a big scene when she claimed that she became terribly injured by a bite by the monkey!  This proclamation soon led to things spiraling out of control!

We have periodic small group meetings after each country and luckily the nurse on the ship was in my group and was able to give us the whole story! So anyways, when the nurse and doctor were notified of this monkey bite they came to the conclusion that the girl would have to receive the rabies vaccine, which comes in sets of 3. As we were ready to depart Manaus, the nurse, the girl, and her mother were on a scavenger hunt around Brazil to try to receive the treatment. After going to 3 hospitals they found a place where she could get the first shot. The doctors were very reluctant to give the remaining doses to the nurse because there is an extreme global shortage of the vaccine and the doctors are extremely worried about the drug getting into the hands of the wrong people.

After we left Manaus the doctor team had to figure out how they were going to deal with the rest of the students exposed. Apparently they were on the phone for 20 hours trying to find enough of the drug to distribute to everyone immediately!  The US State Department got involved and it basically turned into an international issue! Finally they were able to have it shipped to Brazil and after several meetings with the students (they were able to get out of a lot of classes) they called all the students down this morning to the clinic to get the shots!! The total cost of all these vaccinations totaled $100,000 all covered by the Brazilian government. 

Everyone is doing fine and will be receiving 2nd and 3rd doses in the coming weeks.  As for the monkeys the outlook is not as good =(. They are being quarantined and having many tests run on them. There are rumors that the poor monkeys will have to be put to death but we will never really know.

So that’s the latest drama… I’ll write more soon!