Soda, with a Side of Chagas

On February 13, 2005, a man living in a little town near Navegantes in southern Brazil, took his family for a Sunday outing on interstate highway BR-101, which runs alongside an exceptionally beautiful stretch of beaches in Santa Catarina state. In need of refreshment, they drank sugarcane juice from a kiosk by the side of the road. The cane was fresh, machine-crushed in front of them over a block of ice in a jug - just the thing to cool them off in the heat of the southern summer. A short time later they all came down with fever, swollen lymph nodes, malaise, and enlarged livers and spleens. In a few days, four of them were dead.