Mary Engel, Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2007
A Los Angeles County hospital has opened the first clinic in the country devoted to studying and treating Chagas disease, a deadly parasitic illness that has long been the leading cause of heart failure in Latin America and is now being seen in immigrant communities in the United States.
Unless Chagas is treated early, little can be done to halt its advance. Yet because 10 to 20 years can pass before heart or gastrointestinal complications develop, many people don’t realize they’re infected with what has been called a silent killer.
“We really, really need to become more aware of the potential of this disease in our Latin American population because the long-term outcome is pretty horrific,” said Dr. Sheba Meymandi, director of the new center at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. “If we can block the progression to full-blown Chagas disease and heart failure, we’d be doing a huge service.”
Like Lyme disease or malaria, Chagas is a vector-borne illness, meaning that it is transmitted by insects, not person-to-person contact. For Chagas, the insect is a winged, blood-sucking creature commonly called a conenose, or kissing bug, because it feeds at night, often on uncovered faces.
An estimated 8 million to 11 million people in Central and South America and Mexico are infected, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chagas is most common in poor, rural areas, where adobe houses with cracked walls, thatched roofs or dirt floors allow the bugs easy entry.
The parasitic illness can also pass from mother to child at birth and through blood or organ transfusions, which have become the main source of infection in Latin American cities. In December, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a test for screening the blood supply by testing for antibodies to the parasite. The American Red Cross and Phoenix-based Blood Systems, which collect about 65% of the U.S. blood supply, have been using the test since January.
{snip}
Most donors who tested positive since screening began this year emigrated from high-risk areas, sometimes years ago, or were the children of such immigrants, said the Red Cross’ Stramer in an e-mail. But in nine cases still under investigation, Stramer said, infection may have been transmitted by insects in the United States.
According to the CDC, several species of conenose bugs carry the parasite. They are found in 27 states and as far north as Northern California and Maryland. But insect transmission in the U.S. has been extremely rare—or at least not often documented—because of better housing conditions, Stramer said. The infected donors reported spending time outdoors camping and hunting.
{snip}
As the numbers grow, Meymandi knows that some people will complain about the cost of treating immigrants.
“We take care of those who are in need as long as they are L.A. County residents,” she said. “If I can prevent someone from developing heart failure, which if they do will tax the system even more, that’s my job.”
Original article
Email
Mary Engel
at mary.engel@latimes.com.
(Posted on November 6, 2007)
Comments
“new center at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar”
Not in the city, way out in the agricultural areas. Farm laborers, planting, picking and packing the food food we eat. It is caused by insects that live in rain forest thatched huts. The California farm workers also live in rain forest type huts, cars and camps set up outside.
The farm businesses that imported these workers and their disease should pay for the Chagas clinic. But they won’t, the long suffering taxpayer will pay, and pay and pay.
All the medical sites say that Chagas is only found in poor, rural areas of Latin America. Guess they will be updating the geographical distribution of Chagas soon. Those farm workers travel all over the country. Coming soon to your state thanks to our elites immigration policy.
Posted by at 6:56 PM on November 6
““We take care of those who are in need as long as they are L.A. County residents,” she said.”
Why not charge the Judges who decreed that immigrants can defy the law, the attorneys who file and win the pro immigration lawsuits, Homeland security that refuses to protect our border, the Justice Department who fines employers who refuse to hire an illegal with false identification and the agribusiness companies that pay smugglers to deliver these disease ridden workers.
According to mednet and other websites, Chagas is rare in Mexico. These disease ridden illegals are from the rain forest areas of Central and South America. The big farmers are farther south in their unending quest for the cheapest labor.
Wonder how those Chagas patients live? In thatched huts?
This is far from the city of Los Angeles. It is a farm area.
Posted by at 7:46 PM on November 6
Between this and tb as well as some other cases I can’t think of at the moment, there is - and has been for some time - a clear public health issue growing here. If the federal government doesn’t clearly move against illegal immigration AS WELL AS BETTER SCREENING OF LEGAL IMMIGRANTS then the government is failing in one of its primary functions.
Posted by Whiteplight at 8:14 PM on November 6
“As the numbers grow, Meymandi knows that some people will complain about the cost of treating immigrants.”
No, the mooney isn’t a problem, genius. The dollar has lost 8% of it’s value in the last year alone. Withing six years it will be worthless and our economy will collapse before that happens. At that point, we’ll permanently solve the health care needs of the Aztecs, and the blacks, if they don’t finish us off first.
Posted by Paleonordic at 8:19 PM on November 6
“Unless Chagas is treated early, little can be done to halt its advance.”
If Chagas has to strike americans, and it will, why can’t is strike members of congress who do nothing to close the border as well as american traitors who hire illegals and the politically correct crowd that supports illegal migration. Of course this won’t happen, it will strike average “Joe/Jane America” and the elites won’t care.
Posted by at 8:23 PM on November 6
Another glorious reason to ” celebrate diversity “; isn’t it ?
Posted by Michigan patriot at 8:52 PM on November 6
I can’t tell you how nervous this makes me feel. This is just the tip of the disease iceberg, and America is the Titanic.
Posted by at 8:55 PM on November 6
Just about every person from physician to central supply cart pusher who works at Olive View, and the rest of the county hospitals, is some sort of immigrant minority. The County and UCLA hospitals and clinics are in total violation of both Porp 209 and the federal quota systems. Funny, the black women and White feminazis who run the EEOC ignore employers like LA County UCLA med centers that have virtually no White employees.
This Chagas disease, and all other immigrant dysfunction, is just another case of more “jobs for the lads”, as the British Labor Party used to put it. More non White immigrants means more non White immigrant jobs as teachers, police, medical workers, social workers, on and on and on - all to care for these dysfunctional immigrants.
Why doesn’t the Health Department and CDC go after the employers who import these diseases? If a food company imports disease-tainted food, the FDA cracks down. But let a food company import disease-carrying illegal workers to process, cook and serve food…..why that’s quite all right! Admirable, in fact.
Posted by at 10:22 PM on November 6
Selling one’s blood to a blood bank used to be an easy way for drug addicts and other undesirables to make some quick money. Most blood banks are on the ‘volunteer’ system now, but some still pay blood donors. I wonder how many pints of blood immigrants have sold over the years, and many of those pints are infected with Chagas.
The feds should make screening for Chagas mandatory in ALL blood banks. I’m amazed it hasn’t done so already.
Whites should take the time and effort to have their own blood drawn and stored for them for later dates, in cases of emergency. I’m not sure if the Red Cross does this, but many private blood banks do. I think it’s called autologic (?) blood donations?
Posted by at 12:44 AM on November 7
“According to the CDC, several species of conenose bugs carry the parasite. They are found in 27 states and as far north as Northern California and Maryland. But insect transmission in the U.S. has been extremely rare—or at least not often documented—because of better housing conditions, Stramer said. The infected donors reported spending time outdoors camping and hunting.
“
This is the scary part. Chagas is NASTY eating you from the inside out. Many people think Darwin died from it and was a major source of misery in his later years.
Posted by Amsterdamsky at 4:08 AM on November 7
>>Funny, the black women and White feminazis who run the EEOC ignore employers like LA County UCLA med centers that have virtually no White employees.
Yes well said. And when they succumb to one of these immigrant diseases the will howl with indignation; not at the immigrants or themselves for demanding that this country promote “multiculturalism” but at the evil white male devil for not waving a magic wand and making it all better. Because of their anti-white male behavior, I no longer have any sympathy for 75% of blacks and 100% of white females. As Leonard Pitts would say, “cry me a river.”
Posted by Venom at 10:07 AM on November 7
These folks are mostly agricultural workers. We should all remember that in the 18th and 19th centuries it was the agricultural industry that brought us slavery. They used the same agument back then, that they couldn’t produce or harvest their crops without cheap labor (slaves). It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. What they are doing is called cost shifting; they are shifting the costs of caring for their employees onto the taxpaying public. They are stealing from us, they are just doing it in a way that is harder to see than someone with a gun taking your wallet.
Posted by tacitus at 11:08 AM on November 7
The Wikipedia article says that Chagas can be spread by contaminated food. Think about that when you are deciding where to eat out.
Chagas already infects wild oppossums and raccons as far north as North Carolina.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 2:07 PM on November 7
Yet another “gift” from the Latino’s - thanks to Uncle Jorge, in the White House - who allows them to pour over our non-existent borders.
Posted by lydia at 9:12 PM on November 7
“Like Lyme disease or malaria, Chagas is a vector-borne illness, meaning that it is transmitted by insects, not person-to-person contact.”
“The parasitic illness can also pass from mother to child at birth and through blood or organ transfusions, which have become the main source of infection in Latin American cities.”
So it is not passed person-to-person. Except when it is.
Where is the CDC in addressing what is likely to be a grave health concern in the near future: the increasing ineffectiveness of anti-biotics. Thanks to over-use (and misuse) by drug-addicts, homosexuals, and by the dairy and cattle industries, many anti-biotics are losing their effacacy (that is to say, the microbes have evolved resistance to them). The time will come again soon, just as was the case prior to the 1940’s, when people routinely die of sepsis from minor injuries.
Public health agencies, like all public agencies, do not care about the the good of the public. Their highest mandate is to not give offense to perpetually aggrieved minorities, and to maintain the reigning public delusion that diversity is a public good. It is not. Treat every pronouncement from them skeptically. A new age of plagues is upon us.
Posted by CSinAL at 10:11 AM on November 8
Chagas can additionally be spread by sexual intercourse. Since the disease is caused by a protozoan, like malaria and sleeping sickness, I imagine it would be difficult to cure.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:08 PM on November 8
