zlacker

This is amazing, those things are an absolutely nasty parasite from out of a sci-fi horror movie. If you drink contaminated water with them it releases its larva into your body which burrow out of your digestive systems into your body consuming your nutrients for a year or more as it grows, then migrates towards your legs and creates debilitatingly painful blisters trying to force its way out over the course of weeks, and when you submerge the wound in water to relieve the burning pain it releases its larva into the water to infect others. Also don't try to pull it out even when its halfway out of your body or it will snap and die and give you a super nasty infection as it decays inside of you.

>>AngryD+(OP)
>Also don't try to pull it out even when its halfway out of your body or it will snap and die and give you a super nasty infection as it decays inside of you.

Pardon probably stupid question, yet i'm wondering why (under local or general anesthesia of course) it isn't possible to "drain snake" the remainder of the worm and to clean/disinfect the worm channel that way. After all we insert similar flexible stuff into blood vessels from say thigh all the way up to the heart.

>>trhway+Yo
As you might expect from the description -- largely passed on via contaminated water -- the guinea worm is mostly present in areas of extreme poverty. Even if such a treatment were feasible, it would be inaccessible to most of the relevant population.

>>trhway+Yo
Anaphylactic shock, and possibly death, is a potential outcome from the worm breaking internally. Far too risky.