African snails that harbor worms can get transferred to human beings, causing illness, decades of complications and even death, according to CNN.
The disease is called schistosomiasis but is also sometimes referred to as bilharzia. Scistosomiasis can cause chills, fever, inflammation and sometimes death.
The disease is caused by parasitic worms living inside freshwater snails. Once the worms are released from the snail they are free to roam waters, infecting people by inserting themselves into the body, usually by burrowing under the skin.
"Any freshwater which has these snails in them could be the cause of infection," said professor Alan Fenwick with the Imperial College London. "There are 25 to 35 million people infected in sub-Saharan Africa with HIV (and) 10 times that number of people after affected by schistosomiasis."
Not only is it a widespread infection, but it can live inside the body for years and years, perhaps decades.
Other symptoms can be diarrhea, blood in the stool or urine as well as other fibrosis of the liver and kidney, according to the World Health Organization.
Currently, the worms that cause schistosomiasis are not found in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
