The Worst Diseases You Might Get on Holiday

WARNING: This article contains graphic descriptions of utterly gross illness. You have been warned.

Most of us have experienced a touch of ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ on at least one holiday in the past, and it’s an illness most of us would prefer not to remember. If you think that violent stomach cramps and torrential diarrhoea are amongst the worst health misfortunes which can befall you on vacation, maybe you should think again. There are some truly gruesome diseases lurking in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. Here are a few to set your nerves aquiver.

Take Human Maggot Infestation, for example. This fiendishly nasty condition is caused by the larvae of the flesh-fly, which it sneakily lays in the smallest of wounds in the skin. This brainless yet alarmingly cunning fly also manages to deposit its deadly spawn in nasal passages, the mouth, or ear canals – all the openings which are meant to be there, in other words. The ‘larvae’ – maggots, to you and me - then spread like wildfire, eating their way through as much tissue as they can gorge on, and in the worst cases, literally eating their hosts alive. These little beasties also carry leprosy bacilli and cause intestinal pseudomyiasis (packing your faeces with moving maggots – just get the barf bag now).

Or how about discovering that you’ve got ten metres of tapeworm in your gastro-intestinal tract? Caught by eating poorly cooked food, these parasitical monstrosities can cheerfully live in your gut for ten years. They characteristically have white, segmented bodies, which have a nasty habit of breaking off and popping out of your derriere at whim. Whilst they can be killed off effectively with a single pill, disposing of the body is a rather more unpleasant matter: the worm has to be manually pulled out of the intestine, hand over hand, and that’s after you’ve experienced its ghastly death throes. It’ll quiver and squirm inside you as it gives up the ghost, and you’ll feel every twitch and spasm. But it can be even worse: untreated tapeworms can spread to other organs and tissues, producing huge fluid-filled cysts in the lungs and liver especially. These cysts can also take up residence in the central nervous system, where they cause dementia, epileptic-like seizures, and irreparable brain damage.

But tapeworms are just one parasite among many. One man returned from a holiday in Africa feeling fit and well; he’d done a lot of river swimming on his safari break and returned home in tip top condition. Or so he thought. A few days later, at his favourite local restaurant, the waiter appeared ready to take his order. As he was selecting his choicest delights from the menu, he happened to glance up and catch the waiter’s expression: pure, eye-bulging, horror. The waiter hurried away with the order, and unlike previous occasions, appeared most unwilling to spend any further time in jovial chit-chat. Returning home, the man was intrigued. What had the waiter seen? He decided to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, gazing at his reflection, waiting for something to happen. And, oh boy, did something happen. The slimy tip of a glistening black tail, like the butt-end of a small snake, slid out of his right nostril, waved itself about in the air for a second or two, and withdrew again into the nose.

Almost hysterical, the man made an emergency appointment with his physician the very next morning. The doctor gazed steadily at his patient’s face for a few minutes, before exclaiming ‘Oh my God!’ Alarmed, the patient asked for a diagnosis. ‘You’ve got a leech!’ the doctor replied, wholly failing to conceal his gut-knotted aversion.

This ended happily, although somewhat gruesomely. The physician waited, medical pliers in hand, for the leech to make another appearance, clasping it firmly in the jaws of the instrument when it slithered out for another public display, and steadily pulled a huge leech from the patient’s nose. It had been living in centrally heated comfort and endlessly flowing food sources (blood) inside the patients sinuses.

And anyone who thinks that food poisoning simply results in a touch of vomiting and diarrhoea needs to wake up. Film director Michael Winner narrowly escaped having his left leg amputated in 2007 – all because he ate a single dubious oyster whilst on holiday in Barbados. Shortly after the meal, Winner fell dramatically and spectacularly ill. Symptoms began a few hours later with violent shaking and shivering; when his leg was examined, it was oozing blood and covered with blackening blisters. He had contracted Vibrio vulnificus, a vindictive little bacterium which loves to bathe in warm seawater and had slipped in to the offending oyster in Winner’s meal. It’s responsible for causing 95% of all sea-food related deaths. It typically kills people within 32 hours, especially those whose immune systems are depressed. Winner was lucky, even though he was desperately ill and had to remain in hospital in total for a further three weeks. In that time he underwent no less than 11 surgical operations on his leg, the first six of which simply discovered and excised progressively rotting tissue.

Stories like these can inculcate a terrified phobia of taking vacations. But down in the depths of our more ghoulish sensibilities, they’re also horribly compelling. One small measure to keep the horror at bay is take out adequate health insurance before travelling – Winner, notoriously, despite his wealth, had no medical insurance. Happily, he was well-healed enough to simply pay out the £750,000 in medical costs that his private treatment had racked up from his own pocket.

To put things in perspective, do bear in mind that these stories, whist true, are also exceptionally rare. You stand more chance of being propositioned by Kiera Knightley and George Clooney on the same evening whilst shopping in Asda than of contracting these illnesses in the Costa del Sol. But considerably more chance than doing so than of joining Santa for a sleigh ride around the world on Christmas Eve, or being beamed up by aliens eager to find out about your knowledge of Fulham Football Club. In short, don’t take risks; just get insured. And enjoy your holiday (but be wary of oysters).