![]() ![]() cruzi parasites are mainly transmitted by contact with faeces/urine of infected blood-sucking triatomine bugs. Due to increased population mobility over previous decades, most infected people now live in urban settings and the infection has been increasingly detected in the United States of America, Canada, and many European and some African, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific countries. The disease is found mainly in endemic areas of 21 continental Latin American countries (1), where it has been mostly transmitted to humans and other mammals by contact with faeces or urine of triatomine bugs (vector-borne), known as kissing bugs, among many other popular names, depending on the geographical area.Ĭhagas disease is named after Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas, a Brazilian physician and researcher who discovered the disease in 1909.Ĭhagas disease was once entirely confined to continental rural areas of the Region of the Americas (excluding the Caribbean islands). About 6–7 million people worldwide are estimated to be infected with T. Detection and treatment of girls and women of child-bearing age is essential, together with the screening of newborns and siblings of infected mothers without previous antiparasitic treatment.Ĭhagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. ![]() Blood screening is vital to prevent infection through transfusion and organ transplantation all over the world.Vector control and other strategies are key methods to prevent Chagas disease in Latin America.Up to 30% of chronically infected people develop cardiac alterations and up to 10% develop digestive, neurological or mixed alterations which may require specific treatment.In chronic patients, antiparasitic treatment can potentially prevent or curb disease progression and prevent transmission, for instance, mother-to-child infection. Trypanosoma cruzi infection is curable if treatment is initiated soon after infection. ![]() It is transmitted by the triatomine bug (vector-borne), as well as orally (food-borne), through blood/blood products, mother-to-child (congenital) transmission, organ transplantation and laboratory accidents.About 6–7 million people worldwide, mostly in Latin America, are estimated to be infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease.It was at that moment that I realized that I didn't know where Scotland was! I later discovered that it was located within the United Kingdom, north of England, but it stuck with me how a region that should have been obvious as to where it was, was not able to be recognized by me. The part that really stuck with me was a forgettable piece of information, in which there were three, gigantic snow storms that were hovering over Canada, Scotland, and Siberia respectively. The film is about a sudden, global ice age that was brought about by human climate change. It was only when I watched a movie called "The Day After Tomorrow" that I realized how dumb I was about geography. ![]() I always heard on the news about famines in an obscure country called "Yemen", ongoing wars in faraway places like "Afghanistan" and "Libya", and large protests in distant nations like "India" and "Nigeria", but I never really gave them a second thought. Before I really got interested in geography and geopolitics, I never really thought about things outside my own nation, the United States. ![]()
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