MIAMI – The University of Florida (UF) alerted this Wednesday about the presence of Chagas disease in the US, a country where of the total number of people infected with this disease, “potentially fatal” and caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, barely 1% have been diagnosed.
According to Professor Norman Beatty, from the Department of Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at the UF School of Medicine, in the United States more than 400,000 people are infected with Chagas “but less than 1% have been diagnosed”, as collects a statement from the institution.
“Many of the people who have Chagas disease in the United States have emigrated from regions of Latin America but do not know they have this potentially fatal infection,” added the academic, in charge of a program that investigates the prevalence of Chagas disease in Florida, a southern state where the disease “is neglected”, according to what he said.
In Florida, UF experts estimate that there may be at least 18,000 infected people, many of whom are part of the population of some 200,000 farmworkers residing in this state, who “generally receive little or no medical care.”
“They constitute an essential labor force that has emigrated, to a large extent, from various regions of Mexico, Central and South America, to provide the support that is so needed by the Florida agricultural sector,” the statement highlights.
For them, the Institute of Agricultural and Food Sciences (IFAS, in English) of the university, together with the CAFÉ Latino coalition, have held health fairs and medical advice that to date have attended to 400 agricultural workers and their families, from whom Chagas diagnoses have come, as well as diabetes and cholesterol problems.
“A number of farmworkers have uncontrolled diabetes mellitus and hypertension, including some people who had not been previously diagnosed,” Beatty said of the findings of past free health days.
The next one will be held on December 4 in Wimauma, in Hillsborough County, in West Florida.
John Díaz, president of CAFÉ Latino and associate professor of education and agricultural communication of UF, explained that health exams and medical care will be provided at that fair, including vaccines for both adults and children.
“They (farm workers) make sure that we have food to eat even when, many times, they themselves do not have the means to provide food to their own families”, said this son of Cuban refugees.
He added that they are studying how to bring this fair to Osceola county, in the center tro of the state and where the largest community of Puerto Ricans in the state is based.
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