Ken Berwitz
Since President Obama decided to intentionally look the other way as untold thousands of illegals flooded our southern borders, I have written several blogs about the likelihood that they would bring in diseases which are rampant in Latin America but little known in the United States. Click here to read just one of them. (I\’m not bragging; it wasn\’t exactly hard to figure out).
Chagas disease,also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threateningillness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). It isfound mainly in endemic areas of 21 Latin American countries. The disease istransmitted to humans by contact with feces of triatomine bugs, known as \’kissing bugs.\’
Chagas Diseaseis spread by the Kissing Bug in Latin American countries. Chagas often leads toa fatal condition known as Chagasic cardiomyopathy.
The National School for Tropical Medicine at Baylor Collegeof Medicine released a list of factson Chagas Disease.
Accordingto this prestigious school of medicine there are an estimated 300,000 cases ofChagas disease in the United States today with a high level of cases in Texas.The disease was mostly imported from Latin America.
How many cases of Chagas disease would there have been if our borders were secure? Neither I nor anyone else can say for sure. But I think it is an excellent bet the number would have been dramatically lower.
And, let\’s remember, this is far from the only disease being brought up north. If I were betting, I\’d be betting that in the ensuing months and years, we will read about others – non-fatal ones, I hope – which also have traveled in with the tidal wave of illegal border-crossers.
You have to hand it to President Obama. He said that he would transform America. And that is exactly what he is doing.
