ENDEMIC REGION
The town of Pampa del Indio is located in the northeast end of San Martin Department, in the province of Chaco, 220 km away from the capital city Resistencia. This Mundo Sano’s operation center was inaugurated in 2008 and it is  in a small town strategically located in the heart of a hyperendemic region for Chagas disease, since it is the epicenter of its main vector, the Triatoma Infestans or vinchuca. Around 10 thousand people live in the urban area, while 20 thousand people live in the rural area. This is a region with very high poverty levels, occupied in at least 50% by native colonies (toba, wichi, qom, mocoví ethnic groups) which in many cases do not speak Spanish.

MUNDO SANO’S ACTION
This operation center coordinated the so-called Gran Chaco Project, an ambitious initiative with the joint participation of Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia and whose title is "An ecosystemic perspective of Triatoma Infestans reinfestation in the rural communities of Great Chaco ecoregion”. The project is financed by the International Development Research Agency of Canadá (IDRA), and coordinated in Argentina by Doctor Ricardo Gürtler, Director of the Eco Epidemiology Laboratory of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of Buenos Aires University (UBA). In addition, Francois Noireau (IRD, France) and Antonieta Rojas de Arias (CEDIG, Paraguay) also participate in the general management of this project.
The main goal of the Great Chaco Project is to study the T. Infestans reinfestation processes in the rural dwellings of the area.
It is important to point out that the activities performed in the rural area of Pampa del Indio have been carried out with the participation of the vector control program of the Chaco province and the Nation.
On the other hand, Doctor Gürtler conducts a research on the vector’s resistance to insecticides. How is it possible that a vinchuca that has never lived in areas sprinkled with insecticides may show resistance to those chemicals? There are several hypotheses on this matter, like, for example, that the resistant vinchucas have “travelled” (in the clothes or luggage, a frequent phenomenon in endemic regions) from places where insecticide is usually sprinkled or that this resistance is associated with the presence of agrochemicals in the area, since it has recently joined the soya exploitation.
After finishing with the rural area, the plan is to replicate this model in the urban land of Pampa del Indio with the aim to succeed in achieving dwellings free of vinchucas within the frame of a Federal Project of Productive Innovation.
Last year, between 30 and 40 patients were registered in this town during the epidemic undergone in Argentina. ,Regarding the strategy for Dengue prevention, the operation centre set up monitoring actions with egg traps and focal control cycles in order to reduce the vector presence during the summer period.