For the first time, 14 April, 2020 was celebrated as the World Chagas Disease Day by the global community.
Aims: One of the aims was to raise the visibility and public awareness of people with Chagas Disease and the resources needed for the prevention, control or elimination of the disease.
Why this day celebrated on 14 April?
It was on this date in 1909 that the first patient, a Brazilian girl named Berenice Soares de Moura, was diagnosed for this disease by Dr Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas.
What is Chagas Disease?
Chagas disease, also called American trypanosomiasis, has been termed as a “silent and silenced disease”, not only because of its slowly progressing and frequently asymptomatic clinical course but also because it affects mainly poor people who have no political voice or access to health care.
Once endemic in Latin American countries, Chagas disease is now present in many others, making it a global health problem.
Basic facts
- Chagas disease is prevalent mainly among poor populations of continental Latin America and affects 6–7 million people.
- During the past decades, it has been increasingly detected in the United States of America and Canada and in many European and some Western Pacific countries.
- The disease can be transmitted by vectorial transmission (T. cruzi parasites are mainly transmitted by contact with faeces/urine of infected blood-sucking triatomine bugs. These bugs, vectors that carry the parasites, typically live in the wall or roof cracks of poorly-constructed homes in rural or suburban areas. Normally they hide during the day and become active at night when they feed on human blood. They usually bite an exposed area of skin such as the face, and the bug defecates close to the bite. The parasites enter the body when the person instinctively smears the bug faeces or urine into the bite, the eyes, the mouth, or into any skin break) contaminated food, transfusion of blood or blood products, passage from an infected mother to her newborn, and organ transplantation and even laboratory accidents.
- Without treatment, Chagas disease can lead to severe cardiac and digestive alterations and become fatal. (WHO)
