Iris Scanners Used in NY Health Clinics
VELSHI: Those are the number of animals that have been treated so far. There a lot more, unfortunately, never made it as far as getting treated. We want to give you some sense of all that's going on. You know, yesterday, I made Ed Henry take a flight for me and the plane in front of him flipped over, and now I'm making you hold the alligator.</s>MYERS: Right.</s>VELSHI: But this is a real life alligator. It's very still, but a real life alligator. Dr. Chris Dold is here, veterinarian from SeaWorld, telling us how these animals are affected by the oil. Tell me about alligators.</s>DOLD: Right, absolutely. So alligators predominantly live in fresh water. Again, they're found all throughout this region. Alligators are not endangered. They are cousins of the American crocodile that is highly endangered, also found in this area particularly in Florida. These guys will move into brackish waters, but their exposure is probably not going to be direct. Exposure to oil is probably going to be indirect in the bird who is exposed who makes its way into his habitat that he eats, we'll be again be talking about internal ingestion and things like that.</s>MYERS: Now if there's a sheen on the water and his little nose nodes comes into the sheen -- ?</s>DOLD: Absolutely. The same sorts of things, either an external skin contact or possibly inhaling the oil. So, the important thing here is that you got a lot of great people out there responding to this wildlife response, they're taking care of the animals, a lot of animal experts are doing this. SeaWorld does on a daily basis. We take care of usually non-oiled wildlife besides incidental oil exposure, but we treat hundreds of animals each year and already this year we've treated, I think, several hundred and we're not even fully through the first half the year.</s>VELSHI: You didn't get yourself bit, so we're going to keep the animals around and we're going to do more about this. We're going to talk more in the next hour about animals, how they are affected by the oil spill, what you can do about it when we come back. Dr. Chris Dold and his team are here from SeaWorld. Thanks for being with us.</s>MYERS: Thanks, guys.</s>VELSHI: But thank you for doing the heavy work.</s>MYERS: Just call me Dundee.</s>VELSHI: I appreciate that. When we come back we'll go "Globe Trekking," but first take a look at this first.</s>GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This health clinic in New York City is serving a community in need.</s>DR. SAMUEL DE LEON, URBAN HEALTH PLAN: The South Bronx is one of the poorest Congressional districts in the country.</s>TUCHMAN: Urban Health Plan is trying to meet those needs with the help of some cutting-edge technology. When patients first visit the clinic, technicians take a picture of their iris and get other information like name and birth date.</s>ALISON CONNELLY, URBAN HEALTH PLAN: No two irises have the same pattern, that's why it makes it such an accurate method of identification.</s>TUCHMAN: When patients return they get another quick scan and all their records pop up immediately. The clinic sees over 37,000 patients a year, some of them speak limited English and they can have more than 50 patients at a time with the same first and last names.</s>DE LEON: Humans tend to make mistakes, it's only natural. This technology prevents confusion.</s>TUCHMAN: Dr. De Leon partnered with a company called EyeControl (ph) to develop the system over three years. When the cameras got smaller and the system more affordable, Urban Health Plan bought it with grants including one from the New York Department of Health.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So we're all done, OK?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's it? Pretty cool.</s>TUCHMAN: Gary Tuchman, CNN.