CTV NEWS – They may be small, but New World screwworm maggots can burrow or screw into the wounds of living things – including humans in rare cases – and seriously hurt and even kill them.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch is warning Canadian travellers about the flesh-eating parasite after he says the barrier preventing it from spreading north of Panama was “breached.”
“It’s gross – you have like a larva coming out of a wound on your body and they just have to be extracted.”
New World screwworm (NWS), or Cochliomyia hominivorax, is commonly found in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and South American countries, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in a post on its website dated March 3.
Cases are now spreading north to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Mexico, it added.
To stop the parasite from moving to normally screwworm-free areas in Central and North America, the APHIS has worked with Panama to maintain a “biological barrier” zone in the eastern part of the country, which prevented cases from spreading for decades.
“This infection can decimate wildlife and livestock,” the infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General Hospital told CP24 Breakfast on Tuesday …
Cochliomyia hominivorax, New world screw-worm fly, Screw-worm
Screw-worm females lay 250–500 eggs in the exposed flesh of warm-blooded animals, including humans, such as in wounds and the navels of newborn animals. The larvae hatch and burrow into the surrounding tissue as they feed. Should the wound be disturbed during this time, the larvae burrow or “screw” deeper into the flesh, hence the larva’s common name.
The maggots are capable of causing severe tissue damage or even death to the host. About three to seven days after hatching, the larvae fall to the ground to pupate. The pupae reach the adult stage about seven days later.
Female screw-worm flies mate four to five days after hatching. The entire lifecycle is around 20 days. A female can lay up to 3,000 eggs and fly up to 200 km (120 mi) during her life. – animalia.bio
