A new screening strategy could help treat and prevent Chagas disease, an illness spread by parasites that’s prevalent in mostly Latin American countries:

Fighting the disease has traditionally focused mainly on spraying campaigns to kill the bug that carries the single-cell parasite causing Chagas disease, which affects an estimated 11 million people in the Americas.

But a team of U.S. researchers showed they could use easy-to-collect data on the number of insects found in homes during spraying campaigns to identify clusters of at-risk children who should be tested for Chagas disease.

Children? Always risky.

This then allows health officials to better target the disease now creeping into urban areas without having to test entire communities, said Michael Levy, a disease ecologist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, who led the study.

Creeping from rural to urban areas. You know, like meth. Or anchor tattoos.

Study shows new way to fight Chagas disease [Reuters]