Chagas disease is often referred to as the Silent Killer. This is because it frequently remains undiagnosed and untreated, and is more likely to affect people living in poverty. On 17 October, as part of the World Heart Federation’s efforts in Latin America and globally to reduce CVD mortality and morbidity, we hosted the first meeting of the joint WHF and Inter American Society of Cardiology (IASC) Expert Group on Chagas in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the development of the WHF-IASC Roadmap on Chagas Disease, which will be launched in 2019. The Roadmap is part of our efforts to raise the profile of this disease in the region and globally in order to increase access to diagnosis and treatment and improve the lives of the 11 million people suffering from this devastating and much neglected disease. The next meeting of the Group will take place in Punto Cano, Dominican Republic in May 2019.
After the meeting, we also had the opportunity to visit Hospital Santojanni in Buenos Aires, which treats a high number of Chagas patients, and learn from their experiences.
