iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
An American who had been living with a live botfly inside her came to India to get it removed because she couldn’t get it treated or removed or even diagnosed by doctors in the US.
The 32-year-old woman been feeling something walk inside her eye for the last one and a half months, she said. Back home, her problem remained undiagnosed despite multiple rounds of hospitals. She was sent back with few drugs but her troubles with feeling movement inside the eye remained unresolved.
She came to Fortis Hospital in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj with a red, swollen right eye. The patient told the doctors that she had a sensation of something moving inside her eyelids once in a while for the past 4-6 weeks – a period since after her visit to the Amazon jungles.
On her visit to India, she was diagnosed and treated by Dr Mohammad Nadeem, Consultant and Head Emergency Fortis Hospital, ER physician Dr Dheeraj and Dr Narola Yangar (surgery department).
She was also at risk of losing a part of her face and nose and developing meningitis, a dangerous illness that affects the brain.
It was right after the Amazon visit that her problems with the right eye began. She felt that someone had bitten in her right eye and it also bled a little. She was suffering from Myiasis but doctors in the US were unable to diagnose her problem.
Surgeons at the Delhi hospital removed not one but three alive botflies from the woman’s body – One from her right eye, one from her neck and third from the left arm. Her surgery took just 15 minutes and she was discharged from the emergency department itself.
The disease is often seen among children in rural India when a botfly enters their skin through nose or skin. It stays alive on human tissue and eats it out from inside. The disease is also found in some parts of South America and Africa.
