Chagas disease

Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi.

An estimated 6 to 7 million people worldwide are  infected with T. cruzi. Chagas disease is found mainly in endemic areas of 21 continental Latin American countries, where it is mostly transmitted when humans come into contact with faeces and/or urine of infected blood-sucking triatomine bugs (vector-borne transmission).

Chagas disease was once entirely confined to the Region of the Americas. In the last decades the epidemiological pattern of the disease  changed from a rural to a mostly urban disease, mainly due to population mobility, urbanization and emigration. As a consequence, increased  number of cases have been detected in Canada and the United States of America, and in many European and some African, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific countries. Due to the high number of people who remain undiagnosed or untreated, combined with the areas with remaining active transmission, put an estimated 75 million people at risk of infection.

Triatomine bugs typically live in the wall or roof cracks of poorly constructed homes in rural or suburban areas, becoming active at night, biting exposed areas of skin, then defecating close to the bite.

The parasites enter the body when: i) the person inadvertently smears the bug’s waste into the bite or another skin break, the eyes or the mouth; ii) by consumption of food that has been contaminated with waste from infected triatomine bugs, typically infecting groups of people (causing outbreaks or oral transmission) with a higher frequency of severe disease and number of deaths.

Everywhere Chagas disease can be also transmitted through blood or blood product transfusion from infected donors; by congenital (mother to child) transmission during pregnancy or childbirth; by organ transplantation from infected donors; and also by laboratory accidents.

In May 2019, following up on decision of the 72^nd World Health Assembly, the World Chagas Disease Day was established to be celebrated on 14 April (the date of the year 1909 when Carlos Chagas diagnosed the first human case of the disease, a two-year-old girl called Berenice)