Poverty-linked infections

Friday, June 27, 2008 | 2:08 a.m.

A new study released this week deserves immediate attention from the health care community because it suggests significant outbreaks of diseases go largely undetected in America’s inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the border area along Mexico. The report was written by Dr. Peter Hotez, microbiology department chairman at George Washington University and an authority on tropical diseases whose vaccine research has received support from Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

In the study, “Neglected Infections of Poverty in the United States of America,” Hotez argues that certain chronic and debilitating parasitic, bacterial and congenital infections disproportionately affect racial minorities, certain immigrants and poor white populations in those regions. A variety of causes can be blamed — they range from inadequate plumbing in Appalachia to rats in the inner cities to lack of air conditioning along the border. They result in serious ailments that hinder child development, endanger pregnancies and lower worker productivity.

Part of the reason for the urgency in addressing these diseases is that there are no reliable data on the number of people infected. That needs to change. One way would be through establishment of a national data bank. Hotez took a stab at the numbers but his estimates vary widely. For the disease toxoplasmosis, linked to parasites carried by cats, he estimated the number of cases ranged from 1.3 million to 2.8 million. For Chagas disease, which attacks the heart, Hotez said, the numbers could be from 3,000 to more than 1 million.

We share his belief that more emphasis must be placed on health screening in the impoverished regions of this country so proper medical care can be delivered in a timely manner. To do so could help reduce poverty. There is also a need for more complete methods to detect how these infections are transmitted to humans, and for more federal funding to research poverty-related diseases. Now that the issue has been brought to the public’s attention, it is incumbent upon health care policymakers to respond.