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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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zafiro17 on Monday August 17 2015, @06:58AM
Sorry to see that the comments so far have gone straight to the no-man's troll-land of racism, borders/immigration policy, and the like.
This isn't a political issue, it's an ecological issue. Climate change is making the northern world more temperate and the southern USA more tropical, so tropical diseases are moving north. Immigration has nothing to do with it.
I used to live in Central America and know Chagas well: a friend died from it. Insect bites you while you sleep, 4-5 days later you are dead. It's not a matter of humans carrying it across borders, as the simplest of google searches would've revealed.
As to the question, 'can we fix this?' the answer is plainly no: vaccines or pesticides might help, but the long term fix is doing something about climate change, and we are obviously unable to do so. Get used to the new reality, people. Sea level is rising, too, glaciers are melting, diseases like typhoid and malaria have now evolved into drug-resistant strains, and population pressure is decimating our resources and our plant/animal diversity.
Do the math and you can see where we're headed.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @01:11PM
No, it hasn't. I only count once racist post which has already been modded down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @01:11PM
Insect bites you while you sleep, 4-5 days later you are dead.
The parasit needs to infect the body, that is progressive but not going to happen in five days.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday August 17 2015, @08:20PM
The thing is, it's not JUST climate change, it's also the dismanteling and de-emphasizing of public health. So the comments about government are also on topic. (I may not like what they're saying, but they *are* on topic.)
ISTM that the basic problem is that back in the 1960's-70's people felt secure against dangers to public health, so they stopped caring about it. A warming climate has also allowed new dangers to enter, but if the public health system were as active and capable as it was in the 1950's this wouldn't be a major problem. (Sometimes some new research would need to be funded, but in the 1950's that was seen as reasonable.)
In many ways, despite it's political intolerance and brinksmanship the 1950's were a golden era. It's too bad that we couldn't have kept the good parts while losing the intolerance.
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