Wednesday 7 January 2015

Case Study of a Face Eating Parasite

After marking hundreds essays about HIV over the summer, the typical case study of an infectious disease, and becoming increasingly bored of the lack of variation when there are so many other important infectious diseases in the world I decided it was time to introduce my students to something new: a FACE EATING parasite!



Don't get me wrong, HIV is an extremely important case study, but there are other diseases out there which I feel it is also important to be aware of, particularly something which, despite being severe and relatively widespread (at least within LICs), doesn't get very much attention. In fact most people have never even heard of it.

It was featured in an episode of 'Monsters Inside Me' which I showed my class today, and they were suitably horrified at the images of this poor guys face slowly being eaten alive by parasites. I'm also hoping that this will make it memorable for the exam!

We answered questions about the video, we also filled in a worksheet about the global distribution of the disease, which you can download here:


And we did a role play in groups to learn more about the different types of the disease; there are 7 characters that can be found here:


We also looked at the interaction of Leishmanisis with HIV, which is really scary the thought of getting both those diseases at the same time.


Finally we did some exam practise for homework to consolidate our learning in the lesson.


So, go ahead, chose a flesh eating parasite for your next case study! I hope you find the resources useful. You can also find some REVISION NOTES for this case study

LEISHMANIASIS REVISION NOTES

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