The Disease Of Guinea Worm

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Guinea Worm

This disease may be on the brink of being eradicated entirely but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the grossest things that anyone has ever seen. The parasite enters the body via unsafe drinking water. When people drink water infected with water fleas that have have been hosting the larvae of the parasite. There are no symptoms, to begin with, but about one year later, blisters on the feet or legs begin to develop and then the adult fully developed worm crawls out of the host body over a period of a few weeks. It’s said that the pain is intense and can incapacitate a person for weeks at a time. The pain can also continue for months after the infection. The parasite needs to infect a person at least once a year in order to continue. There were an estimated 3.5 million cases in 1986 but the disease has been greatly reduced over time and only 22 cases were reported in 2015. This disease will probably be the first parasitic disease to be completely eradicated in humans.

Filariasis

This disgusting worm parasite is spread by flies and mosquitoes. The adult worm spreads its larvae throughout the host’s lymphatic system and causes the lymph nodes to become clogged up. This also makes the tissue in the host’s body to swell up and create massive muscle deformations, otherwise known as elephantiasis. The elephantiasis mainly affects the legs and genitals. The disease also affects the eyes but that can be easily detected through close inspection but it commonly causes river blindness in the host. It’s been estimated that the parasite is one of the leading causes of blindness throughout the world.

Boy Fly Larvae

The botfly is a regular family of flies that has the horrific habit of growing their larvae on the skin...

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...re the now grown wasps simply fly away from the dead host caterpillar that acted as their apartment through their developmental stages. The wasps are endemic to Europe and several tropic zones throughout the world.

Leishmaniasis

This parasite is spread through the bite of sandflies. There are three different types of infections and they each show varying degrees of severity. The cutaneous form produces mild skin ulcers, mucocutaneous produces ulcers in the mouth and nose, and the visceral form of the disease starts with skin ulcers and then fever, low red blood cell count, and an enlarged spleen and liver. The parasite is detected by a microscope and visceral can also be found by doing blood tests. 12 million people are in infected in 98 different countries and 2 million new cases are found every year. The disease also kills around 20 to 50 thousand people a year.

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