Thanks, CDC laboratories!

I am on call this month for our clinical microbiology laboratory, so I spent part of yesterday afternoon squinting through a microscope and scratching my head (yes, at the same time). Another Iowa lab had sent us a slide and was asking our opinion regarding the identity of a parasitic form in section. After conferring briefly with a couple colleagues and our state lab, we sent several images to the CDC DPDx team. They responded less than four hours later (about 9 pm CDC time). In cases like this (which occur all day, every day, at hospitals around the country), patients may never know that CDC laboratorians were directly involved in establishing a diagnosis. And presumably, some of those patients will receive appropriate care based upon a correct diagnosis, and recover enough strength to vote for a candidate who wants to gut the CDC budget.

Read this report, recently submitted to a Senate committee, about the work of the CDC laboratories. Then consider contacting your own legislators to ask them to boost, not cut, essential public health and prevention funding.