There is a prevalence of parasitic diseases among poor urban families in the U.S., according to Dr. Peter Hotez of the George Washington University. Other ailments like dengue fever and Chagas disease associated with developing nations may also become more common in America due to climate changes.

While these ailments do not claim lives, they negatively affect the development of a child, his intellectual development, hearing and could cause heart disease. As the malady affects poor people, it perpetuates their state of poverty since the infections could last for years or lifetimes

Brazil is considering calling on Cuba to send doctors and has mobilized its military to join the nation's public health workers in battling a deadly outbreak of the mosquito-borne viral illness, dengue fever, which has killed 67 people and infected more than 45,000.

For the past few years, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil has been at the center of a resurgence of the disease in South America

A dengue fever outbreak in Brazil has killed 54 people and infected more than 43,000 in Rio de Janeiro state since January, health officials said Thursday. The number is nearly double the 25,107 cases reported in all of 2007.

The toll for the first three months of this year exceeds the total from all of 2007, state officials said adding that another 60 deaths were being investigated to see whether they resulted from the tropical disease. The disease is transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

The World Health Organization has called for better prevention campaigns following the worst outbreak of dengue fever in Southeast Asia. The outbreak of this "bone-breaker" disease is seen in parts of Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

A large number of the victims of this disease are children. The main symptoms are fever and crying from intense joint pain, a common symptom of the disease that spreads to humans by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which feeds during the day

Plans are underway for Brazil's Ministry of Health to import a United States technology for producing anti-dengue-fever vaccine, as the government already assigned the Sao Paulo-based Butantan Institute to negotiate with U.S. researchers on this possible deal.

The agency's Secretary of Science Reynaldo Guimaraes said that the U.S. developed technology on anti-dengue-vaccine has shown "promising results". He however clarified that it would still take about three to four years to test its effectiveness