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.

The parasitic diseases have affected about 10 million Americans, mostly colored people living in the Mississippi Delta and the American South, the U.S.-Mexico borderland, selected immigrant populations and disadvantaged whits in the Appalachia, Hotez said.

While much funds have been allocated for ailments that have not seen an outbreak like smallpox and avian influenza, little money is alloted for these diseases which affect voiceless people. "It's an unintended form of racism in a sense," Hotez admitted to the Los Angeles Times.

Hotez is currently developing a vaccine to fight the spread of hookworm around the world. He lead an $18 million hookworm vaccine study funded by the Albert Sabin Vaccine Institute of New Canaan in Connecticut.