Chagas disease control in Venezuela: lessons for the Andean region and beyond

Following the success of the Southern Cone programme to control Chagas disease, Andean countries are beginning to implement a similar international initiative. Important lessons could be learnt from Venezuela, which has one of the longest running national control programmes in Latin America, but has received little attention in the scientific literature. Retrospective analysis of age-specific Trypanosoma cruzi seroprevalence data and entomological sampling indicates that while the programme successfully reduced the annual incidence of infection from approximately ten per 1000 people in the 1950s to one per 1000 in the 1980s, in the susceptible population of endemic areas, transmission has not yet been interrupted and could now be increasing. Andean governments can expect control to be highly effective, but must maintain long-term vigilance and targeted control measures to consolidate these gains.