Girl has 8ft 6in long tapeworm after eating sashimi
- The girl, from Taiwan, felt itchiness in her rectum after eating raw fish
- Doctors were shocked to find the long tapeworm inside the eight-year-old
- The child’s illness could be caused by contaminated sashimi, doctors said
Tiffany Lo
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Tracy You For Mailonline
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A handout given out by the hospital shows the tapeworm found inside the girl in Taiwan
Doctors in Taiwan have reportedly found a tapeworm measuring 2.6 metres (8ft 6in) inside a girl who loves eating sashimi, a Japanese dish made of slices of raw fish.
A family member of the eight-year-old child said she experienced itchiness in her rectum after eating the dish at a restaurant in Taipei, a doctor from the Tri-Service General Hospital told Apple Daily.
The girl is said to have recovered after surgeons removed the tapeworm from her rear and prescribed drugs to her.
Wang Zhijian, a paediatrician from the hospital, told Apple Daily that the unnamed girl had contracted a type of tapeworm called diphyllobothrium latum.
The diphyllobothrium latum is the largest human tapeworm and is also known as fish or broad tapeworm, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It could be contracted by the consumption of raw, contaminated pork, beef or fish.
The eight-year-old girl loves sushi, especially sashimi. She is said to have eaten the raw fish dish at a restaurant before falling ill (file photo)
The girl was treated by doctors from the Tri-Service General Hospital in Taipei (pictured)
After the girl’s family told the doctors that she loved eating sushi, especially sashimi, the doctors said her illness could be caused by contaminated raw fish.
He Shengyuan, a doctor in charge of mass education at the hospital, said the tapeworm was estimated to have lived inside the young patient for more than a month.
Dr He said the tapeworm was alive and moving in the girl’s rectum when the doctor removed it. The date of the surgery has not been revealed.
Dr He also warned the public not to eat raw food.
HOW DO PEOPLE GET TAPEWORMS FROM EATING SUSHI
Humans contract tapeworm infections from sushi by eating raw fish that has been infected with the worm in its larvae stage.
When fish eat tapeworm eggs, the hatching larvae attach themselves to the intestinal wall of the fish and the worms infect the fish flesh.
Because sushi is not cooked, the larvae can in turn transfer into the flesh of any human that eats the fish.
Once a human is infected, a tapeworm will grow inside the intestine to a length of up to 15metres over a period of weeks. It can survive for years and go undetected for weeks or months, in turn releasing its own eggs that infect other parts of the human body.
Symptoms include fatigue, constipation and abdominal discomfort – which can be so mild the victim may not notice anything is wrong.
If larvae begin to migrate to other parts of the body they can start to eat away at the liver, eyes, heart or brain and cause life-threatening conditions.
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