In Argentina, one doctor and her NGO have helped make a difference.
Video courtesy of jn1.tv
This blood-sucking bug was first detected 100 years ago by Brazilian doctor Carlos Chagas. It crawls on your lips, while you sleep, injecting a potentially lethal parasite, causing Chagas Disease. A disease that affects ten million people and kills fourteen thousand every year – but has received little or no attention until recently.
The silent killer is only found in poor rural areas of Latina America and the Caribbean. Its victims have barely enough money to live on, let alone pay for treatment. But now, years of neglect have taken their toll. Infected immigrants have helped spread the disease to the United States and Spain, and Chagas is being dubbed the "new AIDS of the Americas."
Chagas was so invisible that big international pharmaceutical companies stopped producing the drugs used to treat it. In 2011, there was a shortage of Benznidazole – one of two 30-year old drugs used by Chagas patients. But Dr. Gold’s NGO, Fundacion Mundo Sano, was already working with Argentine laboratories and government officials to develop a local brand.
As a result of this joint effort , Argentina not only produces Benznidazole for its own population, but also supplies the drug to patients in other countries, like Spain.
Argentine Jewish political umbrella organization DAIA publicly recognized Dr. Gold’s fight against Chagas Disease. In a ceremony, held in her honor, Argentine Health Minister Luis Manzur thanked the biochemist and her NGO for their work.
Fundacion Mundo Sano has teamed up with the World Health Organization, pharmaceutical companies and other NGO’s – like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – to tackle 10 neglected, including Chagas, diseases by 2020.