| Many noxious animals advertise themselves with bright colors and markings, so do not handle anything strikingly marked unless you know it is harmless. Avoid patting unknown dogs, however cute.Some insects lay eggs on human skin so that as they hatch the young eat the living tissue. Accounts of such horrors are just what some travelers like to dine out honor write books about. The good news, though, is that only two animals commonly invade human skin, and only in small discrete areas: you will never be eaten alive. These are tumbu flies and jiggers (not to be confused with chigger mites). In numbers they can be very unpleasant. Botflies in South and Central America also invade skin. Old and New World screwworms feed on living tissue in wounds, and the Congo floor maggot sucks blood from skin. Other fly maggots can cause benign (if revolting) infestation of dead tissue, and have been used medically for centuries to clean up wounds.
Tumbes flies or puts (Cordylobia anthropophagi) are African relatives of blue-bottles or blowflies. The maggots develop in human skin, causing an inflammation like a boil. These 'boils' usually come in crops, often on the back, arms, waist and scrotum. The adult fly lays her eggs on clothes that have been left drying in the shade, and maggots usually get to victims by way of clothes or directly from the soil. Eggs or young maggots also contaminate laundry left to dry on the ground. When the clothes are put on, the maggots invade the skin and grow to a maximum size of 15mm in about eight days. The mature grub, which is club shaped, then falls out through a small hole in the centre of the boil and the inflammation settles down.
The maggot can be encouraged to leave before its eight days are over, but this is not a pleasant spectacle. It first has to be suffocated by placing a drop of mineral oil over its two breathing tubes; these appear as a pair of black dots on the surface of the boil. If gentle pressure is then applied the maggot should pop out. Otherwise, as it suffo¬cates it will wriggle violently, and when it emerges it can be grabbed with tweezers and removed. Too much force at this stage will damage the maggot, and if any part of it is left in the skin there will be an unpleasant reaction. Be firm but gentle. You will come to no harm by leaving the maggot alone, although you probably will not want to.
The way to avoid infestation is to be careful about where you dry your clothes. Hang them on a line in the sun or inside where flies cannot reach them. Only take washing in when it is so dry that it is crisp, for the maggot is unlikely to survive a thorough baking in the sun. Iron clothes inside and out. The waistbands of under-clothes, bed sheets and babies' nappies (diapers) must also be ironed. Tumbes flies are a problem in hot and high humidity regions of East, West and southern Africa.
Jiggers, also known as chigoes or sand fleas, are degenerate fleas. They are picked up by walking barefoot in endemic areas, usually where soils are fairly dry and sandy; it is even possible to acquire them indoors. The most troublesome species, Tunga pentanes, occurs in tropical Africa, Central and South America. Eight to ten days after a pregnant jigger has set up home in you, she will have swollen to the size of a small pea, which causes a painful swelling at the side of a toenail, between the toes or on the soles of the feet. Left unmolested she will shed 3everal thousand eggs and then die, and her remains will eventually be expelled with a load of pus.
Treatment is to pick away with a safety pin or needle until you can remove the whole, very pregnant, egg filled body of the lady jigger. Afterwards the hole must be doused with antiseptic and a dressing applied to stop infection. If the animal bursts during removal the eggs will go everywhere and probably reinvest you. Douse with spirit, alcohol or kerosene to kill the remaining eggs (do not smoke while doing this!).
Botflies (Dermatoid hominids) lay their eggs on mosquitoes. When the mosquito takes her blood meal, the hitchhiking fly eggs hatch and the maggots penetrate the victim's skin via the bite hole or a hair follicle. Covering up with long clothes and repellents protects against botflies. Once under the skin, they grow until after two or three months they measure 2cm. They are unpleasant and unnerving parasites because as they move about you can feel (and sometimes hear) their fidgeting.
One removal technique is to poison the maggot with nicotine from the base of a used no filter cigarette. This throws it into queasemaking convulsions before it gives in, but subsequently the beast can be squeezed out; get a local practiced in maggot evictions to do this if you can. In Belize Barb McLeod has developed a tech¬nique that avoids the dying paroxysms.
Adrian vultur writes for holiday illness claim |
Article Details