Tropical Disease Chagas, Dubbed by Docs as ‘The New AIDS’

The disease kills about 20,000 annually, but like HIV, individuals can live with Chagas, successfully treating it or simply carrying it without ever curing it. 11 percent of pregnant women in Latin America are infected with Chagas, which disproportionally affects poor people. The disease is easily transmitted from mother to child and “about a quarter of its victims eventually will develop enlarged hearts or intestines, which can fail or burst, causing sudden death.” Finally, the medicine required to treat symptoms of Chagas is “extremely toxic.”

“More than 8 million people have been infected by Chagas, most of them in Latin and Central America. But more than 300,000 live in the United States,” Yahoo! News reports. Chagas is a disease that is spreading rapidly, so much so that the Public Library of Science’s Neglected Tropical Diseases journal called the spread of the disease “reminiscent of the early years of HIV.” The disease is transmitted to humans by “the kissing bug,” which likes to bite people on the face.