Cysticercosis. Brucellosis. Dengue Fever. The names of these diseases are not familiar to most Americans, and they're so obscure that U.S. doctors often don't think to check for them. But a new analysis shows that these infectious diseases, which are usually associated with developing countries in the tropics, are surprisingly common in the poorer areas of the United States.
Peter Hotez, the report's author, says the diseases go untreated in hundreds of thousands of poor people who live mainly in inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Mexican borderlands.... Hotez says it is a "disgrace" that diseases causing so much suffering remain at the bottom of the national health agenda. "If this were occurring among white mothers in the suburbs, you'd hear a tremendous outcry," says Hotez, a microbiologist at George Washington University [USA Today].
The report, published in the Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases, lists 24 ...
