‘The silent disease’: Chagas is a killer. Now carriers want their voices heard

The parasite-borne disease is classed as neglected' yet causes 12,000 deaths a year, mostly in Latin America. Can the world really wipe it out by 2030?

The first time Elvira Idalia Hernandez Cuevas heard of Chagas was when her then 18-year-old daughter tested positive.

Hernandez's daughter, Idalia, had donated blood in her home town, near the city of Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico. When her sample was screened, she was told she was a carrier of the neglected tropical disease.