Questões Militares de Inglês - Passado progressivo | Past continuous

         Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. About 6-7 million people worldwide are estimated to be infected with T. cruzi. The disease is found mainly in endemic areas of 21 continental Latin American countries, where it has been mostly transmitted to humans and other mammals by contact with feces or urine of triatomine bugs (vector-borne), known as kissing bugs, among many other popular names, depending on the geographical area.

        Chagas disease is named after Carlos Ribeiro Justiniano Chagas, a Brazilian physician and researcher who discovered the disease in 1909. Chagas disease was once entirely confined to continental rural areas of the Region of the Americas (excluding the Caribbean islands). Due to increased population mobility over previous decades, most infected people now live in urban settings and the infection has been increasingly detected in the United States of America, Canada, and many European and some African, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific countries.

           Chagas disease’s transmission is caused by T. cruzi parasites, which are mainly transmitted by contact with feces/urine of infected blood-sucking triatomine bugs. Normally they hide during the day and become active at night when they feed on animal blood, including human blood. They usually bite an exposed area of skin such as the face (hence its common name, kissing bug), and the bug defecates or urinates close to the bite. The parasites enter the body when the person instinctively smears the bug’s feces or urine into the bite, other skin breaks, the eyes, or the mouth. T. cruzi can also be transmitted by consumption of food or beverages contaminated with T. cruzi through, for example, contact with feces or urine of infected triatomine bugs or common opossums. This kind of transmission typically causes outbreaks with more severe cases and mortality; passage from an infected mother to her newborn during pregnancy or childbirth; blood or blood product transfusion from infected donors; some organ transplants using organs from infected donors; and laboratory accidents.

Internet: <who.int>  (adapted). 

    Ice Age is an animated movie about a story that took place 20,000 thousand years ago. At that time, (I) everything was covered in ice. The movie follows the path of a mammoth, a sabertooth tiger and a sloth after they encounter an Eskimo baby and decide to protect it from the cold and other animals.

    (II) Diego, the tiger, had attacked the tribe to get the baby eskimo but was not successful. Other tigers were unhappy with Diego because of his incompetence to get the baby, who is now with Manfred, the mammoth, and Sid, the sloth. Eventually the three animals get together, although with very different agendas, and form a friendship bond while taking care of the human baby.

    The movie also features a squirrel desperately trying to bury an acorn without success. This squirrel has such a distinctive personality that we can only hope (III) he’ll star in his own movie someday.