Chagas Parasite Disease Now In Louisiana

Chagas is known as the "kissing bug" because at night as person sleeps it crawls up and drinks the saliva at the edges of a persons mouth and at the same time defecates and urinates. In that fecal material dwells a parasite that enters the persons body, is incurable, and eventually kills the person by destroying the heart.

Some experts estimate the number of people in Latin American countries who have this disease to be 25%. About 25% of these will suffer heart damage. So .o6% of the population suffers heart damage from this one bug. You can read the Wikipedia entry on this here.

What does this mean to me? I would in no way consider camping out in states below the Mason Dixon line. ;-) Actually my two youngest sons were visited by the bug one night on a trip to Costa Rica. How did we know? They had a rash around their mouths in the morning from a reaction to the fecal material. By the grace of God, the bug that attacked them was not infected with the parasite.

Info on the discovery in Louisiana is here.