6. Guinea Worm Disease

This disease is every bit as gruesome as it sounds. If you don’t like to the idea of a worm living inside of your body for a whole year, then don’t read on. The parasitic infection is caused when a person drinks water infested with water fleas that are home to the Guinea worm larvae. For a long period of time there are no symptoms and a person will not know that they are infected. About a year later the worm will begin to form a painful, burning blister on either a leg or foot and will begin to emerge from the skin.

A female guinea worm can be up to 100 cm long and it takes literally weeks to wriggle its way out of you; if that doesn’t make you itch I don’t know what will. Thankfully, cases of guinea worm disease have decreased from 3.5 million a year to fewer than 200.