The squeamish may want to stop reading right around here.
For the third time in four months, a Hong Kong patient has been diagnosed with a form of ocular filariasis, which means they’ve got worms in their eyes.
A 15-year-old boy started having itchy eyes on Feb. 15. The symptoms worsened, developing into a low-grade fever. On March 5, the boy began to feel foreign bodies in both his eyes.
Inexplicably, he did not go to hospital until almost a week after he started feeling things one should never feel in one’s eyes. He was admitted to Queen Elizabeth Hospital on March 11.
In November of last year, a 58-year-old woman went to hospital complaining that she felt something in her left eye. Doctors found and removed a worm.
A second female patient, aged 69, started feeling an object in her left eye in January. On Feb. 2, a worm was extracted at hospital.
Medical staff determined the first two cases to be caused by two different Dirofilaria worms.
It is unclear what kind of worm inflicted the last patient.
A Centre for Health Protection spokesman said the authorities are investigating whether the three cases are linked.
Dogs are one of the main natural hosts for the Dirofilaria worm, which can be transmitted to humans through mosquito bites.
Thankfully, it cannot be transmitted from human to human, because the last thing Hong Kong needs is some kind of worm flu scare.
So what can you do to protect yourself from this terrible, terrible plight?
The only thing you can really do is lather up in bug spray.
You can also make sure all of the dogs you know have responsible, humane human owners who give them their heartworm preventative pills, and who will not abandon them on the street, where the dogs could become worm hosts. Good luck.
Photo: Sarah C via Flickr
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