South American Bugs Spreading New Disease Similar to HIV
Mosquito’s and bugs from Central & South American are carrying a
disease which is being referred as ‘The New AIDS of the
Americas”. In a story published by PLoS Neglected under Tropical
Diseases; Chagas disease, is caused by parasites transmitted to
humans by blood-sucking insects. Tropical disease experts from
Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, argue that the dangerous
spread of Chagas through this hemisphere somewhat resembles the
early spread of H.I.V. Chagas is also known as American
trypanosomiasis, because the bugs carry single-celled parasites
called trypanosomes. (Their best-known relative, spread by
tsetse flies in Africa, causes sleeping sickness.) Like AIDS,
the authors say, Chagas disease has a long incubation time and
is hard or impossible to cure. Chagas infects up to 8 million
people in the hemisphere, mostly in Bolivia, Mexico, Colombia
and Central America. But more than 300,000 of the infected live
in the United States, many of them