Desert Messenger

28 www.DesertMessenger.com November 18, 2015 What on Earth Am I Here for? -Seminar- Men Only! Tuesdays at 10:30am Quartzsite Community Center ANSWERING QUESTIONS EVERYONE HAS ASKED: Why am I Here? What Good am I? Is There Something Else I Need? How Can I Find My Purpose? Do I Have a Purpose? Does My Life Have a Meaning? Jeff B. Jones Instructor La Paz County Sheriff's Chaplain Quartzsite Police Dept. Chaplain High Patrol Chaplain (DPS) retired Save those Box Tops for our school Clip Box Tops from hundreds of products Since 1996, the Box Tops for Education program has helped schools across America earn cash for the things they need. Support your school today and see what a difference you can make! Once you start looking, you'll see these little pink coupons ev- erywhere! Each Box Top coupon is worth 10¢ for your school. Drop off your Box Tops at Quartzsite Elementary School, General Store, Food Bank and 76 Quik Chek Shell Station. You can also help by shopping online. For more information visit www.boxtops4education.com. Quartzsite, AZ -Tyson's Well Stage Station Museum is located at 161 W. Main (next to Silly Al's Pizza) in Quartzsite. Museum is open Wed. through Sun. from 10am-4pm. Free admission. Donations are ac- cepted. See what's new and exciting at the Museum! 928-927-5229 or visit www.QuartzsiteMuseum.com. HISTORICAL SOCIETY MEET The next organizational meeting will be held Friday, November 20th at 1pm at the Community Center. Please help plan the future of the museum. Become involved and have some fun, too! For more information, contact Dick Thomp- son at 360-490-5700. Museum is a must see! Dr. Cara Christ, Director Arizona Department of Health Services Dengue and chikungunya are two mosquito-borne viruses that Arizonans can contract when traveling outside the country. If a mosquito in Arizona bites an infected person during their ill- ness, it would be possible for the virus to start spreading in the state. To prevent this from happening, it is important for public health to identify suspected dengue and chikungunya patients quickly and implement control actions, such as educating the patient on how to prevent mosquito bites, or vector control actions to reduce the mos- quito population near the patient's home. ADHS and our county partners are finding new ways to identify patients using syndromic surveil- lance. Our hospital syndromic surveillance system collects ba- sic information for every patient visit from participating hospitals. Hospital syndromic surveillance is intended to be timely, which means we may receive information before the patient even has a diagnosis. Public health users can search for syndromes (a collection of symp- toms) or diagnoses. This summer we began looking in the hospital syndromic surveil- lance data for patients suspected of having certain mosquito-borne illnesses. ADHS and participating hospitals and county health depart- ments developed the project proto- col. There is some national interest in using syndromic surveillance for mosquito-borne illnesses and staff from ADHS and Maricopa County Department of Public Health will be presenting this project at the International Society for Disease Surveillance Conference in Decem- ber. Results on this project are still pending, but it highlights the need to find creative ways to use the data available to us, evaluate its utility and share our findings. www.azdhs.gov/ Unique approach to timely Dengue and Chikungunya surveillance Quartzsite has a new community calendar online Quartzsite, AZ - It's 2015 and we're accustomed to looking up any information we want at the touch of our fingertips. Now there's a new online events calendar just for Quartzsite! QuartzsiteCalen- dar.com website is now part of the Desert Messenger (www.DesertMes- senger.com) publication family. The online, interactive calendar allows service groups, non-profit organiza- tions, and individuals to post their events for free. The Quartzsite Calendar.com web- site will feature everything happen- ing in and around Quartzsite; from Community Events, Entertainment, Music, Meetings, Classes, Swap Meets & Showgrounds, Non-Profits, Clubs, Seminars, Civic Board Meetings, etc. Www.QuartzsiteCalendar.com allows anyone to suggest an event to be posted on the "Submit Event" but- ton at the top of the calendar. Users can fill in the details about the event which will pop-up when clicked on by a viewer. Users can also attach a link to their event website. Visitors to the online calendar can subscribe to events, email them to friends, or share them on social media. Visitors can also print the calendar. Users can also subscribe free for iCal feeds of the calendar's events into Apple iCal, Outlook & Google. If you'd like to include a mini-calendar or events listing on your website, send an email to editor@DesertMessenger. com for details. Be sure to check it out at www.QuartzsiteCalendar.com

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