A Chinese man’s obsession with exotic food turned into hisown death-knell. The man, who very proudly claimed that he swallowed a snake’sgall-bladder, ended up contracting a terrifying disease.
After weeks of suffering from breathing problems andexcruciating pain, doctors found his lungs riddled with worms.
The Chinese resident, known by his surname Wang, recentlywent to a hospital in Suqian, Jiangsu province of eastern China after sufferingdifficulty in breathing for several months, reports the Daily Mail.
The doctors asked about his dietary habits, Mr Wang saidthat he enjoyed having seafood, such as crayfish and river snails.
The food lover also confessed that he even gobbled down araw snake gallbladder once before. The patient was later diagnosed withparagonimiasis, a food-borne parasitic infection caused by lung fluke.
This type of disease is mainly caused by eating raw seafoodthat contains tapeworm eggs or drinking unclean water, the Daily Mail quoted DrZhao Haiyan, a respiratory doctor from the hospital, as saying.
Medical cases like these all boil down to the origins ofCOVID-19. There is enough information to support the belief that at the end of last year, someone at the now world-famous Huananseafood market in Wuhan was infected with a virus from an animal.
Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market had a section selling wildanimals, including badgers, wolf pups, snakes, bamboo rats and porcupines.According to a menu posted on a Chinese equivalent to Yelp, one stall offeredaround 100 varieties of live animals ranging from foxes to peacocks to maskedpalm civets.
Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market became the likely epicentre of the outbreak, possibly after the pathogen jumped from animals to humans, and it has beenslated for permanent closure, AFPreport states.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on China to shutdown wet markets where illegal wildlife is sold. Pompeo’s call was echoed bythe Australian government, which on the same day, urged G20 countries to take actionon wildlife markets in order to reduce the risk of new diseases like COVID-19spilling over into humans in the future.
China's People's daily recently reported that the countryhas passed regulations banning the hunting and consumption of wild animals andtheir products. It further stated that the step has been taken to bettersafeguard people's health and livelihoods, adding that violators will beseverely punished. The ban will come into effect from June 1, it said.