When Emiliana Rodriguez was a little girl, she recalls watching friends play a nighttime soccer match when one of the players abruptly died on the pitch.
Unaware of what had transpired, Rodriguez, a native of Bolivia, developed a phobia of the dark and the “monster”—the silent killer known as Chagas—that she had been told only appears at night. Chagas disease is a unique sort of illness that is spread by nocturnal insects. It is also known as the “silent and silenced disease” that infects up to 8 million people annually, killing 12,000 people on average.
