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More Science and Technogy
Posted April 10, 2006
                  
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Beyond Swollen Limbs, A Disease's Hidden Agony
                                   

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Vanessa Vick for The New York Times
Shehu LLiya who lives in Gwamlar, Nigeria, and has a severe case of filariasis, said people treated him as if he were dead.
                               

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
THE TREATMENT - Workers in Port-au-Prince clean sea salt before spraying it with a deworming drug and bagging it. The treated salt is then sold at a loss to Haitians. Blood tests for worms, right, in Léogane, Haiti, are done after dark, because baby worms in the blood only then, when mosquitos bite.
                                         

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Same as above, THE TREATMENT
                                                

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
                                         

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
A surgeon operates on the swollen scrotum of a filariasis patient. The most recognizable symptom of filariasis is swollen legs, but in men, painful swelling of the scrotum is 10 times more common, and rarely spoken of. 
                                                            

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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Lymphatic filariasis is one of a hanful of infectious diseases in the world considered eradicable, but eradicating it is an enormous task - every infected person must be given a dose of worm - killing medicine once per year for six years.
                      
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Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times
Eradicating lymphatic filariasis will mean an end to new cases, but poor countries will still have to deal with the disease. Limbs swollen due to the parasite require special care, and there is no surgical solution for the swelling.
                                         

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