End the Neglect

Blogging on behalf of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases

Archive for the ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’ category

You Give Me Fever….

December 5th, 2011

Today we feature a repost from from the blog Global Health Policy at NYU-Wagner. Maintained by the students of Karen Grepin’s global health policy course at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, today’s contributor writes about dengue in Latin America, as well as including an overview of the seven most common neglected tropical diseases:

Two years ago, my co-worker traveled to Colombia. She was so excited to go and talked about it for weeks. Her plans entailed hiking on a hidden track through the jungle, touring the countryside and having amazing food. The day she was due to come back to work from her vacation, she was a no show. I was informed that she had contracted dengue while in Colombia and was out sick all week. My head was racing with questions: What? How was that even possible? What EXACTLY was dengue? I knew absolutely nothing about this disease, but it sounded worse than anything I could possibly imagine.

Aedes aegypti - vector for dengue fever

My research informed me that dengue is a mosquito borne infection that causes a severe flu-like illness and can potentially lead to deadly complication called dengue hemorrhagic fever. Mosquitoes became a huge concern for me especially because of my impending trip to Dominican Republic. Dengue was on a rise that year and I was prepared to fight that battle with bug repellant. The entire vacation I reeked of bug repellent, but I didn’t get one mosquito bite. Contracting dengue was my biggest fear and it still is. Dengue is officially on my radar!

The seven most common Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are ascariasis, hookworm, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schstosomiasis, trachoma and trichuriasis. I thought dengue sounded scary, but the top seven sounded worse. Click here to continue reading.

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Posted in Latin America and the Caribbean, NTDs

Tags: dengue Global Health NTDs

Good News on River Blindness

November 23rd, 2011

By: Alanna Shaikh

Mexico, Colombia, and Guatemala are making huge progress against river blindness, aka onchocerciasis. Colombia has eliminated river blindness from within its borders, the first country in Latin America to do so. Mexico and Guatemala have broken the cycle of transmission, and they’re ready to stop mass drug administration next year.

Elimination is a pretty clear term. It means that the disease, while still present on our planet, is down to zero in one particular region; in this case, Colombia. But what does it mean to break the cycle of transmission? Well, onchocerciasis is a tiny parasitic worm[1] that has a pretty complicated life cycle, and one particular kind of fly is essential to the survival of the disease. Without those flies, the disease is not transmitted and dies out.

Photo Credit: The Carter Center

To break the cycle of transmission, you spray insecticide in the areas of fast moving rivers where the flies breed. No more flies, no more onchocerciasis. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it takes fourteen years of spraying to totally eliminate the reservoir of adult onchocerciasis worms and therefore make sure that the disease is gone. Once you’ve reached that point, it takes three more years of close monitoring to ensure that the disease really is gone. If there really are no cases in those three years, then, like Colombia, your country can be certified as having eliminated the disease. » Read more: Good News on River Blindness

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Posted in Blindness, Latin America and the Caribbean, NTDs, Onchocerciasis, Vision

Tags: Colombia Latin America and the Caribbean NTDs onchocerciasis river blindness

USAID Grants PAHO $5 Million to Improve Health in Latin America and the Caribbean

November 22nd, 2011

USAID has awarded the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) an estimated $5,041,913 over the next three years to support PAHO and World Health Organization technical cooperation in global health activities within the Latin America and Caribbean region. The grant will support efforts to prevent and control diseases, such as onchocerciasis, as well as support activities that will help foster public health advancements. Read the excerpt below for more information, or visit the PAHO website to read the full press release.

“The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) signed an agreement today with the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) that provides $5 million to improve health in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a focus on maternal and neonatal health and tuberculosis (TB).“

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Posted in Latin America and the Caribbean, NTDs

Tags: Global Health NTDs PAHO USAID WHO

Kiss of Death: A Parasite Threatens Latin American Immigrants

August 30th, 2011

Helen Coster is a staff writer at Forbes; we’ve highlighted her work in the past. Helen recently reported from Bolivia on a fellowship with the International Reporting Project. Below is an excerpt of her report on Chagas disease in Latin America, and how it can spread to the States:

By: Helen Coster

Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. could be infected with the deadly disease known as Chagas—and most of them don’t know

The vinchuga bug, also known as “the kissing bug,” transmits Chagas disease. Image: Helen Coster.
If Maira Gutierrez hadn’t donated blood over a decade ago, she probably wouldn’t know that she has Chagas, a parasitic disease that may one day stop her heart. The Los Angeles resident felt fine. Only her blood sample, which contained the disease’s telltale antibodies, revealed that she was sick. Like many Chagas patients in the United States, Gutierrez probably contracted the disease as a child, when she was living in rural El Salvador. Today she suffers from heart palpitations and undergoes an annual echocardiogram and electrocardiogram to monitor the disease’s progress. “It’s a relief to know what I have, where it came from, and what it’s doing to me,” Gutierrez says. “I know that I’m not going to die tomorrow.”

Chagas is caused by a parasite called Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi) that remains dormant in peoples’ bodies for up to 30 years, until it kills them suddenly by stopping their hearts or rupturing their intestines. It’s a silent killer; patients rarely show symptoms or know that they’re infected. Worldwide, 18 million people have the disease. Chagas has been a scourge of the developing world for decades—particularly in poor Latin American countries, where a bug called the vinchuga, sometimes known as the kissing bug (because it bites people on their faces while they sleep), transmits the disease. But it’s increasingly becoming a U.S. health problem.