A recent article detailing the sad situation of a transplant patient contracting AIDS from the kidney of a living donor, despite negative tests 11 weeks prior to the surgery, had me thinking about transfusions, the blood supply and the spread of infectious disease (a). Unsavory musings, yes, but there’s one particularly exotic disease and a rather sensitive public health situation that I was thinking about that I wanted to explore in this post.
Chagas disease (Trypanosoma cruzi), otherwise known as American trypanosomiasis, is a protozoan parasite endemic to Central and South America. The CDC estimates that a staggering 16-18 million people are infected with T. cruzi in Latin America, mostly in rural locales, with another 25,000 to 100,000 infected immigrants in the United States (b). Typically, the disease is transmitted by triatomine insects that blood-feed on a humans. Their infective feces often enter the bite wound, oral or nasal mucosa, or conjunctivas and transmit the flagellate parasite.
