NBC News
The Department of Health reported on Monday of the first case of myiasis (infestation by fly larvae) of the parasite comra-carne sweeping worm of the New World in a person identified in the United States, linked to a person who had recently traveled to El Salvador. The case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Maryland Department of Health.
“The risk to public health in the United States is very low,” said Emily G. Hilliard, spokesman for the Department of Health.
This parasite, very common in some areas of Central America and Mexico, can devastate cattle herds, destroy wildlife and even kill pets. In the 1980s and 1990s, serious outbreaks occurred in Central America and eradicated with a large cost, but has reappeared in the last two years.
The Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke L. Rollins, traveled to Texas on August 15 to announce a plan of five parts to combat the boreride worm, which includes raising billions of sterile flies and throwing them from the air over the south of that state and Mexico in the hope of stopping the propagation.
The sterilized male flies mate with females, but eggs do not hatch. Over time, the population is reduced and extinguished. This technique worked in the 1960s, when the United States suffered its latest bullshit worm outbreak.
And it is possible that the federal government is forced to accelerate its work in this regard: when it was first announced in June, the sterilization plan would not be operational until “two or three years”.
The Governor of Texas, Republican Greg Abbot, commenting on the Federal Government’s plan, said the State agricultural industry, with its two million jobs, had a value of 867,000 million dollars. “All this is in danger due to the new world bowering worm,” he warned.
A report by the Department of Agriculture estimated last year that a bare -co -worker’s outbreak could cost Texas at least 1.8 billion dollars due to the death of livestock, labor costs and medicines.
These small parasitic flies, also known as Cochliomyia hominivoraxThey have a devastating effect. The females can put eggs in any hot blood animal, which then hatch free hundreds of borer worm larvae, named for their sharp mouths and their way of digging, which is compared to the movement of a screw.
Human infections can be mortal, but are rare and most cases can be treated.
The Department of Agriculture has reported that the barenting worms have moved to the north, to Mexico, from other parts of Central America. The fly is endemic in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and some countries in southern South America, according to the department.
Mexico notified in July a case in Ixhuatlán de Madero, Veracruz, 370 miles from the Texas border, which led the National Security Department to immediately close the cross -border trade of cattle, after similar stops in November and May.
