The disease is spread by parasites found in kissing bugs, which suck the blood of people when they are sleeping. The bugs typically bite victims around their faces, which gives them their ironically sweet-sounding name. The bugs transmit the internal parasites in their poop, which infects the bloodstream of human hosts through the bite wounds.

The main issue with Chagas disease as a public health problem is that most people don’t know they’re infected until symptoms appear and it’s too late to treat them.