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

Children in Bolivia are shown the bloodsucking kissing bugs that have been hiding in their home. These bugs carry the parasite that causes Chagas disease. Photograph: Christian Lombardi/Alamy

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

Hernández’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.