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petite6
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Reged: 08/14/06
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The Disease You Don’t Notice — Until A Worm Crawls Across Your Eye
07/25/17 07:50 AM






SALAMBONGO, Democratic Republic of Congo ― Before the worms started crawling across his eyes, Jean-Marie Pongomoke would rise at 5 a.m. to track antelope in the bush, and in the evenings he would treat his kills, fix his monkey traps and polish his gun.

But 10 years ago, Pongomoke started struggling to see in half-light and feeling pain in full sunlight. He had flares of itchiness throughout his body and an odd wriggling around his eyes. Tears rolled down his face if he tried to read more than a few pages at a time. It would take years, and an excruciating pain in one eye, before he found out what was wrong.

“I asked people what was in my eye and they told me a worm was walking across it,” said Pongomoke.

The horror they glimpsed is a parasitic disease known as Loiasis, or African eye worm. Caused by the Loa loa worm, it is highly endemic in certain rainforest areas across 10 countries in Central and West Africa. It affects at least 10 million people, and an estimated 29 million are at risk of contracting it. The disease is not well understood, though its first recorded sightings were in the 1770s by French surgeons working in the Caribbean and on ships carrying West African slaves to America.


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Edited (07/25/17 07:53 AM)

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* The Disease You Don’t Notice — Until A Worm Crawls Across Your Eye
petite6
07/25/17 07:50 AM
xx * Yuck! NT
Rio
07/25/17 08:17 AM

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