Chagas’ Disease​—A Kiss of Death

A BRAZILIAN doctor, Carlos Chagas, gave his name to the disease known medically as South American trypanosomiasis. He discovered it in 1909 when he isolated a microscopic parasitic organism called a trypanosome. The disease is difficult to diagnose because after these one-​celled parasites get into the human bloodstream, most of them leave the blood and hide in the body cells and cannot easily be detected.

Once inside its host, the trypanosome multiplies rapidly, but symptoms of the disease vary. Some victims have no indication at all that they carry the disease, but in others irreversible harm is soon done to the spleen, the liver, the lymph nodes, and even the brain. In South America it is also the main cause of death from heart failure in persons under 40 years of age. No drug is yet available to treat the disease, but London’s Imperial College is actively engaged in molecular research to produce one.

The World Health Organization reports that 90 million people are at risk from Chagas’ disease in Central and South America, with up to 18 million already infected. How is the disease carried? It can be transmitted to humans by dogs and cats but more usually by the vinchuca, an insect known also as the assassin, or kissing bug, because during the night it drops onto its victim to feed on the soft flesh of the face, usually around the neck or eyes.

The insect bite is painless. After becoming bloated with blood, the bug deposits its infected feces on the victim. When rubbed into the open wound, either by the insect itself or by the victim, who may scratch without realizing he has been bitten, the feces contaminate the bloodstream. Incredibly, some Mexicans reportedly still eat kissing bugs as an aphrodisiac and become infected with the trypanosome as a direct result.

Called the disease of poverty, Chagas’ disease is normally restricted to poor areas where the bugs breed freely in the cracks of mud-​hut walls. But in recent years it has become more prevalent in prosperous cities, such as Rio de Janeiro. Why? Because people from rural areas who are infected with the disease come to donate blood. Thousands of new cases of Chagas’ disease are reported each year in Brazil, traceable directly to transfusion of infected blood. Migrant workers from South America are now causing concern in the United States, where some blood banks have already been contaminated.

Cleanness, good housing, and proper sanitation are prime requisites in stemming the spread of the kissing-​bug population. And for Christians the command “abstain . . . from blood” means what it says. Obedience to it is lifesaving.​—Acts 15:20.