Latin America: Chagas Disease finding its way into urban areas

IPSNEWS.net reported that Chagas disease, the third most serious infectious disease in Latin America, is developing a “new face” and moving into urban areas, while a new treatment may offer hope for millions of sufferers.

The new face of the disease is exemplified by Luz Maldonado, a 47-year-old teacher from Venezuela. Maldonado contracted Chagas disease by drinking contaminated fruit juice, in an outbreak that infected 103 people at a school in Chacao, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Caracas. One child died, and the lives of the other people infected have been changed forever.

Micro-epidemics caused by contaminated food are a new phenomenon. And, according to the scientific sources consulted for this story, the disease is even more virulent when it is contracted this way, because thousands of parasites enter the bloodstream all at once. The largest of these incidents were reported in 2005 in Brazil, in December 2007 in Caracas, and in 2010 in the nearby town of Chichiriviche de la Costa. Read Article