I am enclosing here a piece I wrote during a lengthy period in 2015, which led to the publication in Nature of a short article about the issues surrounding the Latin American HD communities. I am attaching it in its entirety here. The Nature commentary was a shortened version of…

Dilia Oviedo Oviedo is 79 years old.  She had 12 children. One was stillborn. Of the 11 children that survived to adulthood, 4 already died from Huntington’s disease. 4 more are currently sick with HD, 2 in late manifest disease. Her husband died in the early 90s, and now a…

Factor-H is pleased to announce a private audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on May 18, 2017 (11am) to honor Latin American families affected by HD

As the country of Venezuela spins out of control and people run out of food and medication, the most significant communities affected by Huntington’s disease in Maracaibo are starving. According to our friend and collaborator Dr. Ernesto Solis, a resident of Maracaibo and a tireless advocate of the families affected…

Our work keeps progressing, albeit slowly, to assist impoverished families in Colombia and Venezuela. With the help of several small donations from pharmaceutical and biotech companies working in the field of HD, we were able to gather some resources to finalize our aid programs in 2016. Thank you to those…

Sábanas de San Angel – this past April. We pulled in with Fermín’s car loaded with food, hammocks, and clothes. The scenery was arid – this region has suffered from a profound drought for a while now, and everything is dried up. The Cañahuate trees the only bright color amidst…

My first – unexpected – science lecture for medical students in Barranquilla, Colombia Barranquilla is close to Juan de Acosta, the second largest cluster of HD patients in the world (to our knowledge). The prevalence was reported quite a few years ago by Dr. Daza in one of the few…

  NOV 06 2013 PLEASE CONSIDER MAKING A DONATION. Habitat for humanity and Factor-H, my other ‘job’, started a collaboration together with the Colombian family association (AcolpEH), to raise funds for patients living in suboptimal conditions in Colombia. Find the link here: http://share.habitat.org/fighting-huntingtons We are very behind, and we need…

Barrio San Luis is a neighborhood in Maracaibo, Zulia. Of approximately 3100 people living here, 700 are at risk (23%). The prevalence is estimated to be extremely high, perhaps reaching 10% of all people living in this small and confined area near the city of Maracaibo. During our February/March 2013…

Venezuela remains the country with the highest density of HD in a single location, in and around lake Maracaibo, in the province of Zulia. Factor-H is committed to helping the Venezuelan HD affected communities. The main communities in Venezuela with active Factor-H efforts are in Caracas, and in the Zulia…