Wayra can hardly remember how many times he missed school because of abdominal pain. One day, health department personnel came to his school in Tiahuanacu. “They talked to us about fascioliasis, and I took a tablet that they gave to me and all my schoolmates..." 

In 2013, Brazil’s Ministry of Health began an innovative integrated campaign to improve the health of schoolchildren in the 852 municipalities where people are living in poverty and there is a high disease burden due to leprosy, trachoma blindness, and STHs.

Central America provides a success model for the coordinated fight against NIDs in the Americas. Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama have worked for more than 14 years to interrupt the transmission of Chagas disease.

Efforts to combat the infection were launched in 1996 in the Naicioná community—the single endemic area countrywide—with mass administration of the antiparasitic ivermectin.

Thanks to the international agreements established by PAHO/WHO, and the efforts of the countries in the Americas, the Region’s performance in combating malaria has been outstanding compared with other regions of the world.

Given that Haiti has the highest poverty index and the worst health indicators in the Western Hemisphere, it is not surprising that the country has the highest burden of lymphatic filariasis in the Americas.

A major triumph in efforts to combat leishmaniasis was achieved in 2013 with the implementation of SisLeish. That year, for the first time, the Americas had a system that allows for searching for and consolidating homogeneous, comparable, high-quality data on leishmaniasis, providing health professionals and facilitators with the epidemiologic information and analyses needed...

The Caño Fibra community is located along the banks of the Orinoco River in the Venezuelan state of Amazonas. This remote area in the municipality of Atabapo, yet to see electricity, gas, or piped water services, is home to 15 families of the Piaroa, Jivi, and Puinave native ethnic groups. Enoc Navarro, his partner Juanilde González, and their five children ranging from 2 to 8 years in age are one of these families.

For 20 years, Nicaragua has served as an example for efforts to combat helminths. The country’s Ministry of Health reaffirms this, pronouncing the country “highly committed to improving the population’s health,” particularly the health of children under age 15, the group at greatest risk.

Since the late 19th century, communities in the Mexican state of Chiapas have been aware of an eye disease that, in the most serious cases, produces blindness, but they did not know the name of the disease or how to treat it.

An initial method of classifying the seriousness of dengue cases was developed in 1974. It distinguished three types of dengue: classic, hemorrhagic, and dengue shock syndrome. Over the subsequent 30 years, various problems with this classification emerged. First, not all patients fit into one of the three categories.