Daily Click: Chagas disease articles published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Disease

In a recent post I highlighted a new campaign by Médecins Sans Frontières to draw attention to the burden of Chagas disease. The first two articles in a series  on Chagas disease, which is mostly restricted to those living in poverty in remote and rural locales, have now been published online and open access in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases: New Improved treatments for Chagas Disease: from the R&D pipeline to the patients, by Isabelle Ribeiro and colleagues, and Feasibility, Drug Safety, and effectiveness of etiological treatment programs for Chagas Disease in Honduras, Guatemala and Bolivia: 10-year experience of Médecins Sans Frontières by Oliver Yun and colleagues.  Chagas disease was bumped off the agenda of the World Health Assembly of health ministers in Geneva during May of this year by discussions about how to deal with pandemic ‘flu. This means that  Chagas disease won’t now be discussed by this influential body until 2010, according to a report on SciDevNet . It’s a great pity the opportunity was missed to discuss a disease that is still poorly understood 100 years after its discovery.