Abolishing Ascariasis
You are suffering from diarrhea. You also have a fever, cough and irritated lungs. You may have mature worms in your stool. You probably have ascariasis.
Ascariasis or roundworm infestation is uncommon in areas with adequate sanitation and hygiene. Thus, it is widespread in underdeveloped countries.
The worm eggs are spread by fecal contamination. Once ingested, the eggs hatch in the intestine and the larvae (juvenile worms) migrate through the bowel wall, travel in the bloodstream, become stuck in the lungs, ascend into the respiratory tract, are swallowed, mature in the small intestine, and produce eggs that are expelled in the stool, thus maintaining the life cycle.
Symptoms of ascariasis include fever, cough, pulmonary irritation, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, abdominal pain and visible worms in the stool.
The ascaris worm can grow up to a foot long, infecting 1.2 billion people, with children being the most often infected. The disease adversely affects growth and impairs cognitive development.
Ascariasis is recognized as one of the dozens of tropical diseases. Some scientists refer to it as a disease of poverty because they almost exclusively affect families making less than $2.00 a day. Some experts refer to it as a Biblical disease because it resembles diseases like leprosy that are interwoven in religious stories.
The worms can be found in pig manure. The easiest thing is to avoid using pig manure as a garden fertilizer. If the eggs are in the manure, they can be transferred to a human host by touching. The eggs—which can survive for months in manure-treated soil—can also end up on what is grown in that soil and, if that crop is consumed without first washing it properly, those eggs will transfer to the human host.
The thing to do is to make sure the pigs don’t have roundworm in the first place. By checking pigs for the presence of roundworms before bringing them onto a farm or property, you can avoid bringing the parasite altogether.
By practicing good hygiene like washing your hands thoroughly and washing any fresh vegetable grown on the land, you may avoid the parasite.
Roundworms are easily treated in pigs and people. The biggest issue is the “ick factor” of seeing the actual worms.
Although the disease is spread throughout many parts of the developing world, it is particularly concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa.
And it does more than make the poor sick, it can also make the sick poor because it is impossible to work once afflicted with the illness. For these people, economic development assistance offers little hope.
The disease keeps the poorest people mired in poverty. It cripples economic development efforts in some of the poorest countries.
The diagnosis is made by finding the eggs in the stool (by microscopic examination). Occasionally, mature worms can exit from the anus or be vomited up.
Treatment with the prescription drug pyrantel pamoate is almost always successful, but—as you might expect—unless sanitation is addressed and improved, repeat infestations are the rule.
Some other medicines used to treat ascariasis are mebendazole and albendazole. You rarely need surgery.
The good news is that the infection doesn’t cause any long term health problems. The way to avoid ascariasis is to wash your hands and any produce from infected soil.
