Housing and Health: Psychosocial and Situational Effects in a Rural Disease Control Program.

The article discusses situational and psychosocial variables that predict the housing conditions leading to colonization by the insect that cause Chagas disease in Latin America. Chagas disease, American trypanosomiasis, is a parasitic disease characterized by damage to the heart, prolonged high fever fever, and enlargement of the spleen, liver, and lymph nodes. If the disease does not lead to the death of the infected individual during its acute phase, usually during childhood, it enters an asymptomatic phase, with effects not becoming evident until 20 or 30 years later. Since its discovery, Chagas disease has been considered a social disease related to the poverty of Latin American rural areas. This poverty is linked to the structure of land ownership termed latjfundismo — the system of great landed estates, often held by absentee owners, typically employing semifeudal labor and primitive agricultural techniques. The disease has also been attributed to the lack of education and cultural backwardness of peasant populations.