Chagas's Disease (Essay Sample)

Chagas's Disease
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Chagas's Disease
Chagas disease is a poverty promoting disease and like other neglected tropical diseases, it is a disease of poverty. Globally, it is estimated that over 15 million people live with the condition and six seventy thousand disabilities are associated with Chagas making it the most important and scrutinized disease in the United State of America. Trypanosoma Cruzi a protozoan parasite causes the disease through transmission of faeces blood feeding triatomine bugs. The disease can also be transmitted by organ donations, blood transfusion, eating the contaminated food and through the placenta. The symptoms associated with Chagas disease includes, swollen lymph glands, fever, swollen eye, and rarely meningoencephalitis. The disease was described and identified by Carlos Chagas one hundred years ago and since then; the disease has affected over 8 million people in Central and Latin America. The knowledge of the disease has been facilitated by the scientific community hence promoting methods of managing and maintaining increased knowledge on patients infected with Chagas disease (CD) over decades. Several intergovernmental initiatives were developed in 1990s between endemic countries in Latin America in effort to controlling domestic triatomine vectors. This initiative led to a decrease of transmission to human hosts while promoting public education and improved housing conditions. It’s through the screening initiative that the annual deaths associated with the disease fell in 1990s and by 2006 there was a drastic reduction in estimates of infections.
Discussion
In controlling Chagas, there is need of treatment for T. Cruzi infection. The control of the protozoan assist in eliminating the causing parasite from the individual, hence decreasing probability associated with developing Chagas disease breaking chain of disease transmission. According to Stableford (2012), the main challenges that hinder the control of the disease includes, disease includes, provision of social attention and medical care, consolidation and maintaining of endemic disease, and conducting research to guide and support the surveillance programs. In respect to the challenge facing global health sector, authorities and administrations concerned should be able to answer the following question: Is it worth the expense to Monitor, Screen and educates the public to prevent a Chagas disease outbreak in the U.S.?
Indeed, it is worth the expense to screen, monitor and educate public in quest of preventing disease outbreak in the united state of America. It is evident that there is no specific treatment or vaccine available to treat large-scale epidemic. This proves the essence of creating control strategies which entirely relies on insect elimination, prevention of transmission and nonetheless control of transmission through blood transfusion in medical care centres. There are two different approaches used in screening blood donors. The first entails creation of questionnaires which are designed for identification of high risk donors then excluding them from the donor pool. These are donors from endemic areas and those with travel history of endemic areas hence suspected history of triatomine big exposure. The approach has the potential disadvantage of excluding large number of donors and has the advantage of low cost. The second strategy is to test all donors and excludes only those with confirmed seropositive and repeated seropositive by a separate essay. The approach is plagued by variable sensitivity and it is expensive.
Various states in America has recommended and initiated the creation of surveillance systems and international information networks geared to tracking of reported cases while educating healthcare providers on how to control transmission. There is also the need of defining the risk of congenital transmission and constant screening of tissue donors, organs and blood from immigrants in endemic countries. In so doing, the states facilitates access to treatment and diagnosis for migrant groups at risk. On education sector, approaches have been made to expand education about international health and tropical diseases in European and American universities. Through, screening, education, monitoring control, it became clear that the exercise could lead to elimination of vector insect.
The initiative of vector strategy control started in the 1940s, but implementation was done in early 1970s making it a national control program aimed at eradicating Chagas disease. In averting of its spread, there is the need of decentralizing medical facilities. This will ensure and enable the political class to assist in making policies that will assist the infected and the poor hence minimising spread of new infections and acute cases among the young generation. In social impact, control of Chagas disease has demonstrated reductions of morbidity and mortality rates in areas that benefited control measures. Generally, the initiative of monitoring, educating, and screening has been fruitful in controlling the disease. In economic terms, the impact of the strategy, which includes intervention serology in blood...