LIHU‘E — He doesn’t necessarily run around with a Sherlock Holmes-type hat and magnifying glass, but Dr. Manuel C. Mapue II is making a name for himself in the international world of epidemic sleuthing. Not only has he won trips
LIHU‘E — He doesn’t necessarily run around with a Sherlock Holmes-type hat and magnifying glass, but Dr. Manuel C. Mapue II is making a name for himself in the international world of epidemic sleuthing.
Not only has he won trips to Atlanta and Beijing for his work and wit, but he is at the forefront of helping to identify and wipe out infectious diseases like SARS and dengue fever in his native Philippines.
In that regard, he sees himself as “something of an investigator,” an epidemiologist specializing in tropical medicine and infectious diseases, he said.
Mapue, 43, is the son of Dr. Manuel Mapue of Hanama‘ulu, who with his wife Carol Mapue owns and operates MGM Travel in Lihu‘e.
The younger Mapue stopped in to see his Kaua‘i family recently on his way back from Atlanta’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where one of his papers was selected for publication.
The subject was ammonia poisoning among commercial barge workers along the Marikina River, a tributary of Manila Bay.
Mapue explained that some barge workers had returned to a barge loaded with grain after their regular work hours, with the intent of stealing some of the grain and selling it for profit.
It turned out to be a deadly attempted crime, because ammonia fumes generated by the stored grain overcame some of the men, leading to their deaths from suffocation.
His paper looked at exactly what happened to the men, internally.
He was invited by CDC officials to present the paper, and it was chosen to be published in an international journal of occupational health and the environment.
He was also able to turn the opportunity into a week’s work at CDC, while enjoying two of his favorite things that his position affords him: traveling and writing, he said.
Mapue hadn’t seen his father in around three years before the Atlanta trip, and while in Hawai‘i also traveled to Hilo and Kona on the Big Island, and O‘ahu, before returning to the Philippines.
Officials at CDC paid for his Atlanta trip, he said with a smile. In November, he will travel to Beijing, China, to attend a world conference of epidemiologists. This trip is paid for, too, as the result of Mapue winning a contest to select the theme of the gathering: Forging the Future in Public Health and Field Epidemiology in a Connected World.
That trip, he said, will allow him to further his knowledge of some of the other things that he really enjoys: meeting people and experiencing other cultures. The private eye in him comes through when he talks about what he enjoys most about his job: “The honor of solving an epidemic or a problem.”
In the Philippines, he is in charge of a project aimed at reducing numbers of dengue fever cases in Valenzuela City, in the northernmost part of metro Manila. Some 4,000 cases of dengue fever are reported each year in Manila, many attributable to open sewers and other standing water that is perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carry the virus.
Mapue was one of the point men investigating the early SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) cases in the Philippines. The SARS outbreak ended up being a boom for Hawai‘i tourism, as travelers bound for Taiwan, China and other Asian countries changed plans and came to this state instead of journeying to Asia because of the SARS scares there.
SARS is a highly infectious disease that has caused deaths in many Asian countries.
Besides SARS and dengue fever, a disease all but forgotten here is still common in the Philippines: tuberculosis, he said. His research and work also covers mumps, German (and other types of) measles, and other infectious diseases, he explained.
A lack of access to health care taken for granted here but not available to the poor in the Philippines, and those unsanitary conditions mentioned earlier, are just two of the reasons diseases considered obsolete or routine in the United States are often deadly in the Philippines.
In the Philippines, the younger Mapue works at the National Epidemiology Center of the Department of Health, in the field epidemiology training program similar to the CDC’s epidemic intelligence service, he said.
A licensed medical technologist and certified family physician, Mapue holds bachelor’s and doctorate degrees from Far Eastern University, where his father worked before.
The elder Dr. Mapue is a cardiologist and gastroenterologist, and is proud that his son decided to follow him into medicine, he said.
Paul C. Curtis, associate editor, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net.
