“Can you help me?” is all this woman asks of us before loading her submission with a plethora of photographs of her hair, red-marked limbs and an unidentified, purple matter that looks like it has been photographed through a microscope.

As our reader does not give us any context, nor can we see any worm-like creatures in the photo, it is hard for us to know what our reader wants help with. We cannot see anything in her hair that she might have wanted to show us, and we do not know what we are meant to be searching for when looking at the photo of her limbs or of the purple matter. What we might assume is that our reader is in need of some form of medical help, seeing as she is taking pictures of her body. If that is the case, then we can unfortunately not give any medical advice, as we are not medical professionals; all we can do is give our reader some pointers as to where she can go.

Naturally, our reader can go to her GP, but usually they do not receive training in parasitology and have been known to turn away patients looking for help in this area. That is not to say that our reader does have parasites; but generally speaking, most doctors are not equipped to deal with any kind of creature that is directly affecting the health of a human’s body. So, instead of visiting her GP, what we can recommend is that our reader do one or more of the following: 1) Search for a medical parasitologist in her area using this directory of medical parasitology consultants: https://www.astmh.org/for-astmh-members/clinical-consultants-directory. 2) Search for a local parasitologist by doing a Google search for “medical parasitologist (name of her closest big city)” or “tropical medicine specialist (name of her closest big city)”. 3) Get in touch with Dr. Omar Amin at the Parasitology Center at https://www.parasitetesting.com. In conclusion, we do not know exactly what it is our reader wanted help with, so it is unfortunate that this article does not have that much it can tell her. If she wishes to provide more context, she is welcome to contact us again or share something in the comments section below. Otherwise, in the case that our reader is considering seeking medical attention, we hope that the links above prove useful.