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REPLY TO THREAD
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Subject
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Meet the Flesh Eating Bacteria Sweeping Across Syria
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Original Message
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It's called Aleppo Evil -
Since war came to Syria a little more than two years ago, the country has been transformed into a public health nightmare. Gastroenteritis, which causes severe diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, is ubiquitous among displaced populations -- both inside and outside Syria -- and a measles epidemic is currently sweeping the northern portion of the country. (At least 7,000 cases of the disease have been detected since 2011, according to Doctors Without Borders.) An outbreak of water-borne diseases such as hepatitis, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery, meanwhile, is all but "inevitable," according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
But in camps like Bab al-Salam, it is a silent, flesh-eating parasite that is literally leaving its mark on the population. Cutaneous leishmaniasis, also known as the "Aleppo evil" or the "Aleppo boil," is carried by sand flies and causes painful lesions that can become secondarily infected, often resulting in disfigurement. Another form of leishmaniasis -- visceral -- affects the spleen and liver, and it is the second-largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria. Mercifully, it is only the nonlethal parasite that is coursing through the Syrian countryside, where years of fighting has made seeking medical treatment extraordinarily difficult. Still, the parasite leaves its victims scarred for life.
[link to www.foreignpolicy.com]
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