Woman’s beach walk in Vietnam ends with her getting hookworm

COMING back from her beach holiday, a Queensland woman started to feel things wriggling. WARNING: Graphic content.

WARNING: Graphic content

A WOMAN who contracted hookworm from walking on a Vietnamese beach has described it as “the worst feeling” she’s ever had.

The 42-year-old woman from Queensland, who did not want to be named, told the ABC her ordeal with the parasite was “horrific”.

She recently spent three days at Vietnam’s An Bang Beach, near the town of Hoi An, where she would regularly walk barefoot on the sand.

The Sunshine Coast woman called her hookworm diagnosis “bad luck”, because her kids were playing in the sand much more than she was.

“I didn’t actually have that much contact with the sand apart from getting up and walking straight into the water,” she said.

“The kids, they were burying themselves in the sand and they spent the whole time in the sand and they never had a problem. Just goes to show the bad luck of it all.”

An Bang Beach in Hoi An, Vietnam, where the woman contracted hookworm. Picture: Alamy

The Sunshine Coast woman was at the beach with her children. Picture: Alamy

The incubation period of hookworms is often weeks, meaning symptoms can take a while to show.

The woman realised something was wrong about a week after returning from the holiday.

“I woke up and went, ‘What is wrong with my feet?’

“It was the worst feeling I have ever had. They were swollen, the most intense itching I have ever experienced in my life, swelling, my veins were poking out.

“I had patches of pin prick-looking blisters all through my toes and that was obviously the point of entry — it was just horrific. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before,” she told the ABC.

Late last month, a Canadian couple contracted hookworm. while holidaying in the Dominican Republic.

Katie Stephens and her boyfriend Eddie Zytner started to get swollen feet with small bumps when they returned home from their beach holiday in Punta Cana, realising something was wrong.

It wasn’t until they saw a third doctor that the medical professional realised what it was, giving them ivermectin — a medicine used to kill worms developing in the body.

Thankfully, that viral news story meant the Queensland woman’s hookworm was diagnosed much quicker.

The first GP the 42-year-old saw had no idea why she had itching and tingling feet until she mentioned the Canadian couple’s news story to him. “He was like, ‘That is what it is … I’ve never had a patient with it before.’”

The woman was then given medication that had to be flown in from another state, because the worms had burrowed into her skin rather than being digested.

And despite the Queensland woman being excited to get rid of the wriggling hookworms from her body, she said the recovery process was “horrific”.

“I had the worst night I’ve ever had in my life,” she said, describing how she felt hours after taking the medication.

“It’s called the dying off and it’s when the hookworm is dying and it’s trying to escape your body so every symptom I’ve ever had came back but times 10.

“The itching and the swelling and the burning — it was just like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

“I was crying, like literally crying and could not sleep. It was just horrific.”

The woman described her hookworm treatment as ‘horrific’. Picture: Alamy

Microscopic hookworms are normally ingested but walking barefoot can lead to the larvae invading the skin.

The hookworms then crawl their way around the upper layers of the skin, causing an intense and local itching known as ground itch.

Mark Pearson, a senior research fellow at the Australian Institute of Tropical Medicine at James Cook University, told the ABC even a single hookworm can infect the body.

“They have biting parts in their mouth so they will literally get into your skin by physically burrowing into your skin and chomp away and go inside,” he said.

The risk of getting infected by hookworm is higher in developing countries where sanitation and hygiene may not be as good as Australia.

And as more and more Aussies travel to places in Asia and Central and South America, more travellers will be at risk of contracting the painfully itchy parasite.