Huntington’s disease: the new gene therapy that sufferers cannot afford

Efforts to treat Huntington's disease involve costly drugs way beyond the reach of the poor communities in South America who take part in research studies

As the small motorboat chugs to a halt, three travellers, wind-beaten from the three-hour journey along the Atrato river, step on to the muddy banks of Bellavista, an otherwise inaccessible town in the heart of the heavily forested north-west of Colombia. They swing their hessian bags - stuffed with bedsheets, dried beans and cuddly toys - to their shoulders and clamber up a dusty path. Tucked inside the bag of one of the travellers, neuropsychologist Sonia Moreno, is the reason they are here: a wad of unfinished, hand-drawn charts of family trees.