In Hawijah, the sand flies, not insurgents, strike fear

HAWIJAH, Iraq — Last year, two out of three soldiers sent to Hawijah in north-central Iraq caught a pesky little bug called sand fly fever.



“We’re kind of holding our breath,” said Army Maj. John Dubose, the battalion field surgeon for Tasks Force Grizzly, the unit now assigned to the area. “We’ve had a mild summer so far.”

Technically, summer hasn’t started yet. But as U.S. troops who have deployed to Iraq know, the seasons down in this part of the world are somewhat of a mirage. Basically, it’s divided between cool and varying degrees of hot, from Arizona dry to oven bake.

The phlebotomus papatasi, the entomological term for sand fly, thrives in the heat. Sand flies like standing water, but they don’t need it to live and reproduce. Brush and even trash bins will do, according to Dubose, an internist and pediatrician who serves in the South Carolina National Guard.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=29284

I can just hear the macho bullshit now. Followed by the uninformed medical bullshit from the VA: Sorry son, but the VA doesn't recognize something called "sand fly fever." I think it's all psychosomatic or evidence of malingering.

Vet goes home, morose because he either believes the dopey doctor and that he's a quitter, or doesn't believe the dopey doctor, figures that his country has turned its back on him in his hour of need. One way or the other, he takes it out on himself, and the survivors are either glad he didn't take anyone with him, or that angry that he did.

And a bunch of fake macho congressmen vote the military another $100 billion so their campaign benefactors can make another $75 billion in war profiteering, and another 1,000 magnets go on another 1,000 SUVs, and nobody sees the whole picture.

Leishmaniasis (LEASH-ma-NIGH-a-sis) is a parasitic disease spread by the bite of infected sand flies. There are several different forms of leishmaniasis. The most common forms are cutaneous (cue-TAY-knee-us) leishmaniasis, which causes skin sores, and visceral (VIS-er-al) leishmaniasis, which affects some of the internal organs of the body (for example, spleen, liver, bone marrow)...

...People who have visceral leishmaniasis usually have fever, weight loss, and an enlarged spleen and liver (usually the spleen is bigger than the liver). Some patients have swollen glands. Certain blood tests are abnormal. For example, patients usually have low blood counts, including a low red blood cell count (anemia), low white blood cell count, and low platelet count.

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:scared:
rocknation

more especially when a soldier picks at the lesions...which some do. I saw a soldier at the post hospital with "sores" all over him and the nurse told me they were lesions caused by sandfly bites. Up until that point I had only heard about it..but now I've seen it.


Oh, and the sandfly is also in Afghanistan.

they get Methicillin Resistant Staph and not very many antibiotics can stop it!!!