Any experience with a skin irritation known as 'sand worm'? Is it actually a parasitic worm or is it a fungus? How is it treated.

Got a case of it this year in Zimbabwe and it was treated when I returned to RSA with a fungal cream. By the time I returned home the lesions were scabbed over. First stop after the airport was my doctor's office. She perscribed a topical cream to kill parasites and also oral medication to kill internal worms.

So which was correct?

Last year in Mozambique I picked up what I was told a Sand Worm. A couple weeks after I returned home I noticed one of my toes was hurting. Closer examination showed it is swollen and looked like a Boil. I cut it open and some nasty stuff pored out. I put on some anticeptic and a bandaid. It healed up ok.
I sent my PH a e-mail telling him about it. He said it was a Sand Worm he thought.
Maybe it was or maybe not? Anyway it healed up.

I don't know if it's the same, but there is a condition called cutaneous larval migrans. It's caused by larval worms that get into the skin and crawl around. The worms are parasites generally of species other than humans and their life in the human body is self limited but while there, they cause tracks under the skin, itching, etc. The condition can be acquired from sand or soil where cats have defecated and other animals have defecated.

If the condition was cutaneous larval migrans, the a topical medication would not be beneficial except for symptomatic relief. If the condition was a fungal infection, like the so called ringworm which isn't a worm at all, then topical medication would be appropriate.

Sand worm treatment.

When the skin next to the nail is nicely swollen up and ripe do the following:

Get a foot bucket with very hot water and put some baking soda in it and antiseptic liquid (disinfectment). This will soften up the skin and kill all bacteria.

Use a clean, sterile syringe and break the skin of the "boil". Open it up pretty nicely. Take a another swig of the whisky (O, I forgot, start with a good swig from a bottle of scotch)

Clean the wound out with the needle, and look for very tiny piece of white string (this is the actualy worm). IT is very small.

Now take biroxide and pour it into the open wound. (did I forget another swig of the bottle?)

Now it burns like hell and boils a bit. But it is clean.

Dry up, use anti septic and drink the rest of the bottel.

Let it dry in the morning.

You'll be all right by day three, unless you kept on drinking the Scotch!

Very common in the Zambesi delta these buggers!

Good luck!

The skin irritations were on my upper arm, palm of my hand, and dorsal side of the index finger.

They were all the same. A cluster of small blisters, and red skin.

They are all mostly healed now, just scabs left.

I did drink quite a bit of Harrier just as a precaution.

As kids we had sand worms treated with ethyl chloride spray. Freezes the skin and kills them. Your dermatologist or local er should have it.

Sandworms. You hate em right? I hate them myself.



Sorry, Bettlejuice fan!

Not Sand Worm - Sand Flea or Jigger.

It penetrates the skin and lays its eggs in a sac and lives under the skin until the eggs hatch.
All the while it itches like mad and the more you scratch the worse it gets.

Infinito had aptly described the removal process but beware the sac is not broken as it will result in a quite severe infection.

Yep, google "tungiasis" and "Tunga penetrans."
Those little buggers are about 1 mm long.
Immature sand fleas burrow in and suck blood for a month, mature, spew their eggs back out to the world, and die.

What a life cycle: Female copulates with male, male goes off to copulate with another female and may or may not decide to suck blood before he dies, female buries head in skin of host, butt pointed out, and there she sits and sucks blood, expels eggs, and festers until she dies.

Self limited disease, treated by removal of flea and any secondary infections caused.
Interesting that the Spanish explorers of the Caribbean/West Indies picked them up in the late 1400s early 1500s and spread them to the Old World from the New World.

Sandworms can be much larger, bigger in mass than blue whales: