The US has come up with a strategy to stop the flesh-eating New World screwworm's northern march toward the US-Texas border. For anyone not convinced of the importance of halting the parasite, the Telegraph provides a cautionary tale out of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where the screwworm has recently gained a foothold. In a hospital whose ER treats gang members with "machete wounds most days," patients with flesh-eating worms—the fly's larvae—have been emerging since April. The paper's description of the first patient, an elderly woman who succumbed to septic shock, is enough to give chills:
- "The screwworm fly had entered the patient's mouth and laid its eggs in her larynx. After the worms hatched, they ate their way down to her lungs."
The screwworm largely impacts cows and other livestock animals; Honduras had been free of it for roughly three decades before it reappeared three years ago. "Everything indicates that illegal cattle routes from Central America"—which bypass health checks and are a popular money-laundering avenue for the area's drug cartels—"are the arteries through which the screwworm is circulating again toward Mexico," wrote a Wildlife Conservation Society expert recently. Most human victims are vulnerable people with open wounds, such as the elderly, the homeless, or those with chronic health conditions. In the current outbreak, hundreds of cases have been recorded in Honduras, including a 19-day-old baby. Patients describe intense pain and a sensation of movement as the larvae consume living tissue.
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