One rainy Friday morning in March 2015, Dr Laila Woc-Colburn saw two patients with neurocysticercosis (a parasitic infection of the brain) and one with Chagas disease, which is transmitted by insects nicknamed \u2018kissing bugs\u2019. Having attended medical school in her native Guatemala, she was used to treating these kinds of diseases. But she was not in Guatemala any more \u2013 this was Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n
For half a day each week, one wing of the Smith Clinic\u2019s third floor in Houston is transformed into a tropical medicine clinic, treating all manner of infectious diseases for anyone who walks through the door. Since it opened in 2011, Woc-Colburn and her colleagues have treated everything from dengue and chikungunya to river blindness and cutaneous leishmaniasis. Their patients are not globetrotting travellers, bringing exotic diseases back home. The Smith Clinic is a safety net provider, the last resort for healthcare for people on low incomes and without insurance. Many of their patients haven\u2019t left the Houston area for years.<\/p>\n
This suggests that what Woc-Colburn sees in the clinic may be just the leading edge of a gathering crisis. Diseases once associated with \u2018elsewhere\u2019 are increasingly being found in the southern states of the USA. Infectious disease physician Peter Hotez was so concerned that he founded a school of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, well within the territory that Hotez argues is one of the world\u2019s\u00a0ten hotspots<\/a>\u00a0for so-called neglected tropical diseases.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we were calling them neglected tropical diseases, the \u2018tropical\u2019 part is probably a misnomer,\u201d says Hotez. \u201cMost of the world\u2019s neglected tropical diseases are in wealthy countries. It\u2019s the poor living among the wealthy.\u201d<\/p>\n Poverty is a critical factor. But the American South\u2019s hot and humid climate, the influx of insects that carry diseases, and the ever-increasing movement of humans have combined with the region\u2019s high poverty levels to create a perfect storm of disease. While we might already have seen some of the storm\u2019s effects, the worst has yet to arrive.<\/p>\nReference:<\/h4>\n