BREAKING NEWS: Brain eating disease outbreak in Australia LIVE!

[managainstworld]

Rat Lungworm.
Be sure that you have sufficient information when this outbreak is coming to your doorway.. Australia has reported 5000% increased number of reported cases of Rat Lungworm disease this year alone, causing death to toddlers in a very sad way..

Please watch your children when they are playing in your backyard.. This is to avoid unnecessary fatality for our children..

[ButterflyWoman]

I can't confirm the 5000% increase figure (where did that come from?) but given how rare the disorder is, if a cluster of people contracted this parasite within a year, it could account for it.

I did some research on the topic and came up with a few links:

CDC - Angiostrongylus
News Blog: Watch out Hawaii: Veggies may harbor rare parasite
Angiostrongylus cantonensis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rat Lung Worm (Angiostrongylus catonensis) Factsheet - NSW Health
A killer in the garden - Sunday Night - Channel 7 - Yahoo!7 TV - Yahoo!7 TV

The thing I took away from it is this: Thoroughly wash all your raw vegetables, and don't eat (or allow your kids to eat) raw snails or slugs.

[nothuman]

Darn..... raw snails and slugs are a foundation to my kids diet...guess its back to cat food for them

[ButterflyWoman]

We do have a lot of snails and slugs around our front garden. When it rains, I see them out, and I sometimes pick them up and have a look at them (I like them, what can I say?), and I let the kids hold snails, too, because they're interesting creatures. I'll just make extra sure that everyone washes the slime off their hands if we do handle snails/slugs. We do that, anyway, of course, but knowing about this is good, because I can make sure to really enforce it.

I was thinking about the supposed 5000% increase. Basically, the incidence of people getting sick from this parasite is really, really low. Only a handful of serious cases in Australia in the past fifty years, and most of them recovered (apparently, most of the time, even if you encounter this parasite, you don't even have symptoms from it, because in most cases your body's natural defences are more than adequate for killing the parasite before it can do any damage at all).

The thing with percentages is that they can be really scary. If one person a year on average gets Disease X, then if, in some other year, three people get it, that's a sudden 300% increase. It's still a very small number.

I'm not saying it's a good idea to eat unwashed vegetables or to gobble up snails and slugs (or let your kids eat them), of course, but I don't think there's anything to panic about. I did see that there has been an increase in this parasitic infection in various places in the world, which may have to do with the way food is imported all over the world, etc., and that does bear investigation, certainly.

But the sky isn't falling, as far as I can tell. Unless it starts raining snails, I guess. That could be a problem....

[votoshka]

Actually the other day I was catching snails for my lizard, and my son told me that snails can carry some awful disease... I sort of pooh poohed him at the time. Then today I warn the kids about this rat lungworm disease and he says, "Yes, I TOLD you about that mum, you didn't LISTEN!".

So there was egg on my face .

I do agree though, it's best not to panic. Just errm wash your hands if handling snails or slugs (it happens...I get lots of them in the garden) and make sure your kids do too!

[managainstworld]

(hmm, seems I lost the post i typed just now)
Hi all,

Yes 5000% is indeed coming from a small number, in the beginning there were only 10 reported cases for the last 50 years in Australia. But this suddenly rise to 10 reported cases this year alone..

If you try to search the web for this, you will only find few news about this.

I'm a father with 3 mo old baby girl and I was struck when I saw the news about this and how government decided to cover it from public.

I then decided to spread this news so that more ppl can know about this info. (this is one of the reasons why I started my blog few days ago)

Additional info regarding slime:
Please be careful with the slime! I'm working in seafood industry and for your information slime is the perfect environment for bacteria and worms to grow. And it is very HARD to get rid slime 100%! Slime actually acts as a thick barrier for organism inside!

So when you are exposed to slime, in order to kill the micro organism inside the slime, you have to remove slime by using hot water first as it will dissolve slime, and afterwards use disinfectant soap to kill the micro organism.

Another thing: be careful with open wound, as the larvae seems to be able to travel through your blood stream, up to your brain..

Hope this info helps,


Onemanagainsttheworld

[wanzulfikri]

Originally Posted by nothuman

Darn..... raw snails and slugs are a foundation to my kids diet...guess its back to cat food for them

Really? Your kids ate snails and slugs?

[ButterflyWoman]

Originally Posted by wanzulfikri

Really? Your kids ate snails and slugs?

It was a joke. The comment about cat food should have been the giveaway, along with the grinning emoticon.

[Curious cat]

Originally Posted by wanzulfikri

Really? Your kids ate snails and slugs?

And he really looks like miley cyrus in real life too

[Curious cat]

Thanks o OP for posting about this, and to butterflywoman for the links. Just another reminder why it's a good idea to practice good hygiene.

I never thought about washing with hot water, good tip hank you.

[votoshka]

Hey there managainstworld, the reason I deleted your link in the first post is because it was your first post and it looked as if it was simply there to promote your blog, which is something we discourage (unless you're an actively posting member, and then it's something that's considered okay unless you're ONLY promoting your blog and not participating in any other way).

I left the original post because after a bit of research I decided that the information it presented was valuable (and it's something I wasn't aware of... simply because I didn't listen to my 11 year old when he tried to tell me about some snail disease ).

[Came]

Let me just remind you how rare this disease is, 10 people have been subjected to the disease this year. Your more likely to get the disease as a child and so between the age of 0 and 10 however obviously there will be some exceptions so lets say 15. There's 1.9 billion children between 0 and 15 and so in 15 years there would be 150 cases. That means that there is a 7.89*10^-6% (one in 12 million chance) you will ever receive the disease in your lifetime. That's about the same chance you have of winning the lottery if you played it every week (780 times) until you were 15 years old.

[managainstworld]

@ Votoshka:
Points taken, fair enough.
I was making the blog simply because to spread the news on this disease. No problem removing the link, more credible link was shared in this thread anyway.

@ Came:
It is a rare disease indeed, but its good to know right?
Imagine if you are the mother of that teenage boy in the video who ate live snail simply because he was accepting a dare from his buddies.. (search youtube for this disease, relax its not my video) He thought: hey whats the harm in it? Bang! He is now losing partial of his brain..

[ButterflyWoman]

Originally Posted by managainstworld

It is a rare disease indeed, but its good to know right?

I certainly deal with snails and slugs differently now (I resist my urge to pick them up and play with them; I'm sure they appreciate that!), and I'm more vigilant about making sure anything from the garden has had a really good wash.

It can't possibly harm anyone to be aware that slugs and snails CAN carry this parasite, and that while, for most people, it will never be an issue, there's nothing wrong with leaving the snails/slugs alone and washing your vegetables and fresh herbs.