Chagas disease is transmitted by an insect known as the 'kissing bug' because it tends to bite people's faces, near their mouths.
Many never shown signs that they've been infected with the disease, which is why it has earned the nickname of the 'silent killer'.
The disease has mostly been limited to Central and South America, but it has entered the States, sickening an estimated 300,000 Americans.
A statement released by the American Heart Association says that if US doctors don't become better at recognizing, diagnosing and treating Chagas disease, it could result in a devastating outbreak.
Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which lives in the gut of bug that transmits the disease, the triatomine insect, which is also known as the 'kissing bug'.
However, the disease is not spread through the bug's bite, rather through its feces.
After the bugs feed on you, they tend to defecate. If the feces accidentally are rubbed into the wound or the eye, it can result in infection.
Chagas disease has two phases known as the acute phase and the chronic phase.
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["The disease has mostly been limited to Central and South America." So how did it get here? --Editor]
7 comments:
I'm moving north.
Humm wonder how that got here?
It must be ripping through the trailer parks ruining families down south!
When you wash your hands, do your face, too.
"The disease has mostly been limited to Central and South America, but it has entered the States, sickening an estimated 300,000 Americans."
Gee, I wonder how it got here.
Any ideas from you anti-American open boarders dumbocrats out there?
brought here from some turd world country!
Edward Abbey wrote of kissing bug disease in the American west in the Seventies.
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