One rainy Friday morning in March 2015, Dr Laila Woc-Colburn saw two patients with neurocysticercosis (a parasitic infection of the brain) and one with Chagas disease, which is transmitted by insects nicknamed 'kissing bugs'. Having attended medical school in her native Guatemala, she was used to treating these kinds of diseases. But she was not in Guatemala any more – this was Houston, Texas.
For half a day each week, one wing of the Smith Clinic's third floor in Houston is transformed into a tropical medicine clinic, treating all manner of infectious diseases for anyone who walks through the door. Since it opened in 2011, Woc-Colburn and her colleagues have treated everything from dengue and chikungunya to river blindness and cutaneous leishmaniasis. Their patients are not globetrotting travellers, bringing exotic diseases back home. The Smith Clinic is a safety net provider, the last resort for healthcare for people on low incomes and without insurance. Many of their patients haven't left the Houston area for years.
This suggests that what Woc-Colburn sees in the clinic may be just the leading edge of a gathering crisis. Diseases once associated with 'elsewhere' are increasingly being found in the southern states of the USA. Infectious disease physician Peter Hotez was so concerned that he founded a school of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, well within the territory that Hotez argues is one of the world's ten hotspots for so-called neglected tropical diseases.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
2 comments:
What did you all expect when this country does not have a secure hold on immigration laws. These diseases are coming from Central and South America. Thousands of Illegal immigrants are consistently entering into this country. And, some do not arrive in good health nor the Affordable Care Act insurance. We can keep playing with this issue if we want to. A day will come when one of illegal immigrants will enter the United States with a contagious disease and the United States will have no means go control the disease.
Thanks, OweBama!
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