They often enter through the feet. Once inside a person's body, they suck the blood, grow and breed, multiplying by the hundreds. Affected body parts - buttocks, lips, even eyelids - rot away.
James Kakooza, Uganda's minister of state for primary health care, said jiggers can easily kill young children by sucking their blood and can cause early deaths in grown-ups who have other diseases. Most of those infected, especially the elderly, cannot walk or work.
"It is an epidemic which we are fighting against and I am sure over time we will eradicate the jiggers," Kakooza said.
The insects breed in dirty, dusty places. The medical name for the parasitic disease is tungiasis, which is caused by the female sand fly burrowing into the skin. It exists in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, besides sub-Saharan Africa. _TimesLive
Tropical Africa has always been a hotbed for disease and human suffering. Considering that humans evolved in that general region, it is understandable that the most effective parasites to afflict humans would have also evolved in larger numbers there.
The jigger infestation is just one of countless infectious and parasitic diseases which have left a lasting imprint upon the evolving human population of tropical Africa. The disease burden of the area is no doubt at least partially responsible for some of the distinctive characteristics of human populations in Africa -- for good and for ill. Consider the problem from an evolutionary perspective. What type of selective pressures would such diseases and infestations present to an evolving population?
Some infestations and infections occur mainly in areas of poor hygiene, but others can strike seemingly randomly, out of the blue.
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