A 5-year-old girl was brought to the emergency room at Evelina London Children’s Hospital with itchy, rather unsightly sores on both legs. She had recently returned from a weeks-long trip to Sierra Leone, and the lesions, which first appeared three weeks into her stay there, had become larger and ulcerated.
The CDC noted in its weekly report in March that reported cases of this highly contagious infection had recently increased tenfold, from an average of only three a year during the period 1998 to 2011, to 33 a year during 2012 to 2017. Still, the agency said, these numbers underestimate the true incidence of such infections.
But having visited some pretty wild areas in the last five decades, I know that many people neglect to consult travel health experts in advance of their trips and are lax about updating needed vaccines. Upon returning home with a health complaint, they often consult physicians who may have never seen the condition before or even heard of it since medical school, if then.A close-up of a mosquito.
Cutaneous larva migrans, an extraordinarily itchy infection by the larval stage of a hookworm, is most commonly acquired from dog or cat feces deposited on beaches of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, Keystone said. Best protection: Don’t walk barefoot on the beach; wear water shoes, not sandals. The infection, should it occur, is now easily treated with oral antiparasitic drugs like albendazole or ivermectin.
In an interview, Keystone, who wrote the chapter on skin and soft-tissue infections in returned travellers in the CDC’s travel health guide, called the Yellow Book, urged the use of either Icaridin or 50 per cent DEET, both of which can provide up to 10 hours of protection. He said Icaridin is better tolerated; it smells better and is not greasy.
Use the repellent regularly, especially during the hours mosquitoes are most active, and apply it after putting on sunscreen, not before.