From USA Today:

Tropical diseases commonly occur among poorer people in the U.S., leaving behind such lingering long-term problems as intellectual disability, heart disease and epilepsy, according to a report issued this week.

Study author Peter Hotez said the diseases go untreated in hundreds of thousands of poor people who live mainly in inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Mexican borderlands.

Hotez says it is a “disgrace” that diseases causing so much suffering remain at the bottom of the national health agenda.

“If this were occurring among white mothers in the suburbs, you’d hear a tremendous outcry,” says Hotez, a microbiologist at George Washington University.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 7:10 pm and is filed under epilepsy, intellectual/developmental disabilities, poverty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post