a couple of viruses are on the radar of Health officials right now let a welcome in infectious diseases expert Dr Isaac bogos who joins us this morning to discuss Dr bogos always good to see you good morning let's begin with the first one which is a transmitted by insects and is popping up in places never seen before what can you tell us about this and have we seen it yet here in Canada yeah this is called oruche virus many people probably haven't heard of this one before this was discovered in Trinidad and Tobago in 1955 and there's been you know small outbreaks of this mostly in tropical areas of South America over the last several decades what's interesting is this year there's much more of it than before and it's popped up in places where we haven't seen it before for example there was a reasonably sized outbreak of this in Cuba travelers to Cuba travelers to Brazil have returned to their home countries with this infection it's sort of like d fever uh muscle aches pains headache fortunately the vast majority of people get better on their own uh and it's as you point out it's transmitted by biting insect midges and and some types of mosquitoes can transmit it best to seek medical care before you travel to see if there's any things you can do to stay healthy and maintain healthy while you're away always a good idea to use insect repellent while traveling especially in these areas because it's not just going to protect you from this but other nasty biting Critters that can transmit other infections people can have a healthy safe and happy and happy trip all right uh what Canada has seen is empo in fact Toronto actually reporting a spike in cases Dr bogos yeah certainly you've seen more empo here in Toronto and and Thro Ontario so far in this 2024 calendar year than combined throughout 2023 just a reminder that this infection while may be forgotten by some is not gone and again I'm saying this with love with respect with no moralization with no stigmatization but in in Canada this infection over 96% of of people with this infection are in the men who have sex with men Community that's why the public health messaging the vaccination campaigns the all of that is really targeted towards that community and a huge credit to the leadership in The Men Who SE men who have sex with men Community because they've been fully integrated in the public health response and the messaging and getting the word out to the community in ensuring the uh vaccine clinics are in areas where people feel more comfortable going and and that's that's the right way forward this is not uh um uh equal risk across the population certainly there are a much higher risk in in men who have sex with men especially people with multiple sexual partners and in sex workers and that's why we've seen the targeted Public Health campaign that's been rather effective all right finally Dr bogos we wanted to ask you about this a new study that is reportedly taking place at the University of Calgary where so-called poop pills they're think think could improve mental health what's the story behind this well it's hard to keep a straight face because you think poop pills and mental health probably should be mentioned in the same sentence and some people W even bring up poop pills in any sentence but the the technical term is a feal microbiota transplant where basically you get the veal material of other people somehow into your intestine just you know erase the gross factor for a second this is is a well trodden path to help cure uh an infection called clostridium defil which causes a very severe and possibly dangerous diarrhea uh it's not the first line of therapy but if we have resistant uh or recurrent Clum defal diarrhea this feal microbiota transplant is very effective now are there other benefits of this who knows I think if you're going to start doing this type of procedure on people you have to have the highest quality evidence and a high burden of evidence to say that it has other positive benefits I think it's also important to keep an open mind it's just premature to say that it has other positive benefits like mental health benefits okay all of a sudden my cup of coffee after looking at that jar the first image uh is not looking as appetizing anymore but Dr bogos thank you so much for that update my pleasure have a great day guys