These are, most likely, the most important diseases you’ve never heard of.

They disproportionately affect Americans living in poverty, and especially minorities, including up to 2.8 million African-Americans with toxocariasis and 300,000 or more people, mostly Hispanic Americans, with Chagas disease. The neglected tropical diseases thrive in the poorer South’s warm climate, especially in areas where people live in dilapidated housing or can’t afford air-conditioning and sleep with the windows open to disease-transmitting insects. They thrive wherever there is poor street drainage, plumbing, sanitation and garbage collection, and in areas with neglected swimming pools.

Most troubling of all, they can even increase the levels of poverty in these areas by slowing the growth and intellectual development of children and impeding productivity in the work force. They are the forgotten diseases of forgotten people, and Texas is emerging as an epicenter.

A key impediment to eliminating neglected tropical diseases in the United States is that they frequently go unrecognized because the disenfranchised people they afflict do not or cannot seek out health care. Even when there is a clinic or community health center in an impoverished area, it often lacks the necessary diagnostic tests, and the staff is rarely trained to recognize and manage neglected tropical diseases.

We have an opportunity to stop these diseases, but we need to act. First, we need programs of active surveillance and monitoring to obtain more accurate information on the true prevalence of these diseases and how they are transmitted. We also need better diagnostic tests; worm infections like cysticercosis and toxocariasis can often be treated effectively with antiparasitics and anti-inflammatories, but they are frequently misdiagnosed.

Finally, we need safer and more effective drugs and new licensed vaccines. For instance, there are drugs to treat Chagas disease, like benznidazole and nifurtimox, but they are hard to procure, often not effective in adults after the symptoms of heart disease begin and so toxic they cannot be taken by pregnant women. And unfortunately, with a few exceptions — like some promising new dengue vaccines under development — the major pharmaceutical companies see little financial advantage in investing in better treatments or vaccines for these diseases.