Ken Barrett gave a brief overview of the Bocce committee's findings and the overall decision to continue Bocce fund-raising with some new twists -- a concept of Bocctoberfest ...
Ken then gave some details of what his role is as the "President-elect". Key role is to attend the PETS training conference and drink lots of "Koolaid" :-). His answers to the two questions were ...
1. Why did you choose this role? It was essentially coercion he says :-). But primarily it is to help his kids understand the concepts of service.
2. How would you improve it? Learn from others at PETS and promote and implement those ideas at our club.
#####
Following that we had a very informative talk by Kevin Glynn about cross-border Tuberculosis (TB) crisis. Kevin is a retired pulmonary physician, former medical director of respiratory care at Scripps Mercy, and a member of Rotary for 17 years and is on the Rotary District 5340 Immunization Committee. A native of Chicago, he graduated from Northwestern University Medical School, and completed residency at the University of Michigan. 
When he learned of the plight of the homeless in Baja with tuberculosis, and their connection to TB in the U. S., he decided to join a bi-national coalition working to alleviate this problem. Rotary Clubs are a potential resource in this campaign. In 2017 he published Gasping For Air, a book on how our breathing is killing us and what we can do about it.
As per Kevin, TB spreads from droplets of cough and the bacteria in these droplets spreads and kills tissues in the lungs and other parts of our body. Some stay dormant forever. The U.S. does not recommend any vaccine since it is very rare in the U.S. However, many Asian and other countries have been providing TB vaccine shots and hence the skin tests many times indicate a positive test but the chest x-ray will confirm it as negative because these bacteria stay dormant.
He says that San Diego is seeing some cases primarily due to the transient population form Mexico. It seems that Imperial county has the highest cases - almost 17 per 100,ooo people. However, Baja has 57/100K. 40% of the cases in San Diego has connection to the border traffic. Hence the goal is to reduce the cases in Baja and other parts of Mexico to prevent those cases from reaching San Diego.
His key project now is to fund a clinic in Tijuana called Las Memorias where patients stay for 18 months and get treatment. His plan is to add 30 more TB patients there and hire more staff to follow-up with these patients. They need about $450,000 over the next 3 years. He is collaborating with our club members Venky and Herb to initiate a grant.
==============