Emiliana Rodríguez, 42, moved from Bolivia to Barcelona 27 years ago and realized she couldn’t escape Chagas, that she calls a “monster.”
“The fear usually came at night. Sometimes I didn’t sleep,” she said. “I was afraid of sleeping and not waking up.”
It was eight years ago when, pregnant with her first child, Rodríguez took some tests that revealed she was a carrier of Chagas. “I was paralysed with shock and remembered all those stories my relatives told me about people suddenly dying,” she said, also recalling the death of her friend. “I thought, ‘What’s going to happen to my baby?’”
But Rodríguez underwent treatment to prevent the parasite from reaching her unborn child through vertical transmission. After her baby girl was born, she tested negative.
