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posted by CoolHand on Sunday August 16 2015, @11:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the at-least-its-not-catscratch-fever dept.

Speaking of bugs, Ars Technica carried a story about the resurgence of tropical diseases in south Texas (with a title almost inviting Betteridge's law: "Can America cope with a resurgence of tropical disease?").

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 anymore—this was Houston, Texas.

[...] “While we were calling them neglected tropical diseases, the ‘tropical’ part is probably a misnomer,” says Hotez. “Most of the world’s neglected tropical diseases are in wealthy countries. It’s the poor living among the wealthy.”

Once aggressive government-funded eradication programs finally halted local malaria transmission, the optimism of the 1950s and early 1960s—combined with the advent of life-saving antibiotics and anti-parasitic drugs—made infectious diseases seem like ancient relics.
“People thought that specializing in infectious diseases would be a waste of time because they would soon be history,” says Lucas Blanton, an infectious disease physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

[...] Edwards knows a few things about Chagas: it is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and spread by a group of insects called Triatoma, or ‘kissing bugs’ (because they like to bite near the mouth). .... Chagas is a major problem in Latin America, where an estimated 8 million people are infected.

[...] Edwards’ new patient, however, had never been to Latin America. She had never even left the USA. She was, Edwards explains, “your All-American girl,” hardly a candidate for a disease that mainly infected poor, rural populations in Central and South America. ... The case has stayed with Edwards for several reasons, the main one being the mystery of how the girl became infected if she’d never left the country. But south Texas is home to the same kissing bugs that transmit Chagas. The answer, then, had to be this: she had been infected with Chagas in Texas. And she was unlikely to be the only one.

[...] Results from studies that tested donated blood for Chagas support the idea that it is a major problem in Texas. A 2014 study showed that one out of every 6,500 people who donated blood screened positive for Chagas—almost 50 times more than the CDC’s estimate that one in 300,000 Americans was infected.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @02:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @02:26AM (#223725)

    politicians have better things to squander public funds on than public health.

    Yeap, let the public health in the hand of corporations, what can go wrong?
    (Just from curiosity and to avoid an accusation of false dichotomy: do you have a solution to suggest?)

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 17 2015, @02:53AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 17 2015, @02:53AM (#223735) Journal

    Yeap, let the public health in the hand of corporations, what can go wrong?

    I'm not arguing here that we should abandon public health to the private sector. I see that as a legitimate role of a government.

    (Just from curiosity and to avoid an accusation of false dichotomy: do you have a solution to suggest?)

    Sure, government reduction. As I view it, a key part of the problem is simply that the federal government does too much. This allows for two relevant synergistic effects to take root. First, the greater complexity weakens the ability to govern the government. There's only so much public attention to go around and low incident of tropical disease probably won't make the threshold until someone famous gets sick.

    Second, is the already mentioned squandering of resources on other things. A smaller government which is focused on delivering a few things will be better and more cost effective than one which has plenty of other activities to divert funding.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @05:35AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @05:35AM (#223775)

      Yep, less government will mean the remaining people will be more focused on your pet issue....
      LOL

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday August 17 2015, @11:43PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 17 2015, @11:43PM (#224152) Journal

        Yep, less government will mean the remaining people will be more focused on your pet issue....

        Pet issues such as government spying on its citizens? Corruption? Growing dysfunction of basic government services like roads and law enforcement? The rule of law? Yes, I want people to be more focused on my pet issues and I think they should for their own good be focused on my pet issues.