Amazon Initiative to Combat Chagas Disease

A Pan American Health Organization backed regional initiative launched in 2004, bringing together the countries of the Amazon basin in a coordinated effort against Chagas disease, the most recently formed of a series of PAHO-supported sub-regional Chagas initiatives that also include the Southern Cone Initiative of 1991, the Andean Initiative of 1997 and the Central American Initiative of 1997. Unlike its predecessors, which focused chiefly on eliminating the insect vector inside houses, the Amazon Initiative was designed around a form of Chagas transmission specific to the region: oral transmission through food or drink contaminated by triatomine insects or their feces, a route that has become an increasing concern as deforestation and urbanization bring people into closer contact with the insects in their natural forest habitat rather than in domestic settings. The initiative coordinates vector surveillance, blood-supply screening and case management across the Amazon basin countries under the same multi-country cooperative model PAHO established for the earlier Southern Cone, Andean and Central American efforts.