Chagas disease

Abstract

Although Chagas disease only infects children in the American hemisphere, and though children do not suffer the morbidity and mortality of the disease, it is a disease of children. The acute form of the infection, though self-limited, is a harbinger of the most common cause of heart failure in the world. The treatment has moderate benefit and thus, identifying the infection in children and preventing the disease has a profound impact on the goal of reducing some of the millions of deaths from heart failure.