Researchers trying to track third world infections in U.S., By Joseph Brownstein, May 14, 2010, ABC News: “Researchers and legislators are trying to determine just how far some obscure but deadly third world diseases have penetrated into the United States. Studies in recent years have shown that diseases typically confined to less-developed countries have entered the United States, coming over the border or arising in places where conditions abruptly changed, like post-Katrina Louisiana. But poverty and a lack of access to healthcare have made it hard to determine how severe the problem might be. ‘The poverty in the U.S. tends to concentrate in certain pockets,’ said Dr. Peter Hotez, chair of the department of microbiology, immunology and tropical medicine at George Washington University Medical Center. He cited the Mississippi delta, post-Katrina Louisiana, the border region with Mexico and U.S. inner cities: ‘Those particular areas, for all practical purposes, resemble a developing country…'”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty