On the Trail of a Deadly Disease That Cuts Down Farmworkers in Their Prime
The kidney condition, which has claimed at least 20,000 lives in Central America, is showing up in the U.S.
Isidoro Quezada sits for the Emory University team as they measure his vital signs and draw blood.
Photographer: Ysa Pérez for Bloomberg Businessweek
The tropical sun was beating down on Homestead, a city on the southern tip of Florida, when Valerie Mac, a nurse-scientist and occupational health specialist from Emory University, pulled her van into the driveway of a small vegetable farm. Its owner, Isidoro Quezada, walked out to greet her, his arms caked with dirt and his face streaked with sweat and grime.
Mac and her two research assistants followed Quezada into his home, where they sat him down to take his blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature and instructed him to provide a urine sample. They also drew his blood, placing the vial in a portable analysis machine. “We process it,” Mac says, “pretty much like you would do in a hospital or a lab, and then we put it on dry ice right away to preserve it and get it back to the school to analyze it.”