Girl thought to have bad cold turns out to have leech in her windpipe

Saturday 15 Mar 2014

Doctors were surprised when a young patient suffering from throat pain turned out to have a live leech stuck in her windpipe.

The seven-year-old girl from Zhaotong, south-west China, was taken to the Kunming Children’s Hospital by her parents after she began having problems with her breathing.

Medics eventually discovered she had a five centimetre worm in her windpipe and removed it.

‘We thought she might have caught a cold, but never thought it was a leech or that it could stay there so long,’ the unnamed girl’s mother said.

Doctors added the worm had probably grown in size while it was in the youngster’s throat after sucking on her blood.

The leech is thought to have entered the schoolgirl’s mouth after she drank directly from a tap.