Ibermed is training healthcare personnel in Southern Spain to improve the diagnosis of Chagas diseae

Ibermed is a non-profit organization based in Huelva (Andalusia, Spain), made up of doctors, other people from the health system and people from a number of fields. Since 2023, it has been part of the Chagas Global Coalition.

On January 30, World Neglected Disease Day, we visited the Health Center of Minas de Riotinto, municipality also in Huelva, lead by two members of the organization and professionals at hospitals in the capital area, Dori Tarifa Ortiz and Francisca Cabeza Cabeza. This is one of the last centers out of the 28 selected for this project. From 2024 to 2026 they will be training about Chagas disease, and a comparative study will be made out of the data collected in those centers, to measure the success of the training based on the number of diagnoses or prevalence of Chagas disease.

The session covers all areas regarding Chagas disease, such as epidemiology, geographic location and prevalence, etiological agent, transmission routes, stages of the disease, diagnosis, treatment, etc. At the end, the attendees ask their questions, and it is clear that there is great interest in, for example, the importance of a tropical disease like Chagas in a non-endemic country like Spain, where the only transmission route to consider is congenital.

It is estimated that 100,000 people live with Chagas disease in Europe, 50 to 70 thousand of those in Spain. Also, some estimates indicate that by 2050 around 50% of heart transplants could be related to complications caused by Chagas. To avoid this situation, in 2024 the Ministry of Health of Spain approved a prenatal screening protocol for Chagas disease, which will be available in all areas of the country within two years. However, some areas of Spain were already carrying out these screenings for pregnant women from the 21 endemic countries in Latin America, such as Andalusia, where the protocol has been active since 2014. The Ibermed project is designed to provide screening and prevalence data in a national context where estimates of underdiagnosis are high.

During the training session, there was a section about Ibermed’s cooperation work with the Ministry of Health of Guatemala. Chagas disease is a major public health problem in the most affected Central American country. Ibermed has been cooperating with them since 2018 through several projects in the departments of Jutiapa and Chiquimula. “We prefer to focus on one place and be able to better serve a population that is manageable” – says Dori. They have been carrying out two campaigns a year, mostly focused on improving housing to prevent the proliferation of infected triatomines, and on the diagnosis of Chagas heart disease.

There are more than 1 billion people in the world affected by Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), more than 7 million by Chagas, and yet these diseases continue to be silenced. The progress that an organisation like Ibermed is able to bring to so many people in Guatemala is an example of what a global action based on the “Unite, Act, and Eliminate NTDs” theme, from the “One Health” approach, could mean in terms of eliminating these diseases as a public health problem in the world.