Before I hit you with some of the many impacts that jigger
infection causes, I’m gonna throw you a right hook with a quite horrible
picture of jiggers at work.
Now I know this photo doesn't make too pleasant
viewing, but I’m banking on it wetting your appetite to find out more about
jiggers and how they can actually affect an individual besides the obvious.
One thing that I find striking having been involved with
jiggers for a while now, is how many issues are directly involved in or in some
way implicated in the infection of jiggers.
First of all we’ll take it look
at the obvious and then get on to the more complex.
Physical Impacts
As you can see from the photo, jiggers seriously impact an individual physically. This photo is of a man who
could barely walk due to the infection. As you can imagine this prevents him
from working for a living. His case may have been more extreme than most, but
often one finds that your average infected individual’s mobility is hindered, whether it be walking to school or just doing the daily chores. The nature of rural livelihoods in Kenya renders mobility a vital ability, more so than we may think coming from a more urbanised lifestyle.
Secondary Infections
Another impact of jiggers are the diseases that can come
with infection. The jiggers themselves are not actually carriers of any
disease, yet they still find a way to make one very susceptible to a life threatening disease. Here we are talking about secondary
infections such as Tetanus, Gangrene, HIV/AIDS, etc. By feasting on the blood
of the host, jiggers reduce the effectiveness of the immune system. It also opens up
the flesh of the skin to provide access to these other diseases. This especially
occurs when the traditional method of treating jiggers is employed. This method is still
regularly used today; it involves piercing the skin with a blade and
pulling the jigger out with a needle resulting in some very big and, more
importantly, exposed wounds. Some treatments have been known to share needles
between patients facilitating the transfer of HIV from one patient to another.
It has to be said though that this is now a rare occurrence due to the vast amount
of education and health awareness that has gone into preventing HIV/AIDS in recent years.
Psychological Impacts
Jiggers is an infection loaded with harmful stigmas and myths. I myself have heard it explained away as "witchcraft". Other quite bizarre conclusions have been drawn, such as the view that jiggers is something in the blood, past down the generations. People believe these myths because often jiggers seems to stay in the family due to the conditions that they have lived in. Essentially this all stems from a lack of education and awareness on the issue (something we will get into at a later date). Although these claims may be baseless, they can affect an individual psychologically. This is particularly evident in school life, as children infected suffer from bullying and are often left out of activities due to their condition. This results in low self-esteem and poor school performance. Many kids don't even make it to school due to their condition. These stigmatisations can cause an individual or family to feel worthless in their community. They may begin to believe the false stigmas created about them, making them less likely to try and beat the infection.
So you can see what a menace jiggers really are. What I think is imperative to note is how all these impacts are entangled in poverty. Poverty leads to jiggers, and jiggers make it harder to escape poverty. It is a vicious cycle that I will explore more in my next post on the "prevention of jigger infection".
