A woman who thought she was pregnant for five months has told of her shock after giving birth to a worm.
Anna Mbizi, 38, went for regular check-ups at a doctor’s surgery and was told she was pregnant with her third child without the benefit of an ultrasound scan.
“I consulted my doctor when I was two months pregnant and was told everything was normal. This was going to be my third baby,” Mbizi said.
But on Sunday morning, Mbizi, of North End in Bulawayo, says her world came crashing down after she “gave birth” to a worm in the bathroom.
She said: “When I experienced the pains, I thought I was going to miscarry but I was shocked when a worm came out.”
Mbizi says her boyfriend has abandoned her, saying: “I really thought I was five months pregnant as I had all the signs and symptoms of a pregnant woman. I am still short of words.
“I am afraid my boyfriend is going to leave me. He really wanted a baby and now that I delivered a worm, I am not his favourite person.” Her doctor described her situation as “unusual”.
“I examined the woman three months ago and she appeared to be two months pregnant, but when she came back on Sunday night nothing indicated that she had been pregnant although there were signs of strain on her uterine tissue,” said the doctor.
“I examined the woman after this alleged incident and could not find any baby. The situation left us to believe that the worm had been acting like a baby.”
The superstitious Mbizi blames her misfortune on witchcraft. She cites a recent confrontation with a neighbour who owes her US$150.
“I think my neighbour bewitched me,” she said.
After giving birth to the worm, she said, she was advised by friends to “put coarse salt on it so that I’m not cursed again”.
She put the worm in a plastic container.
“I put salt on the worm and it shrinked, almost dissolving into liquid form. As you can see, there is some blood in the residue,” she said, holding the plastic container.
A 24-year-old woman was restrained and tormented in the store window display of cosmetics store in Regent Street, London on Tuesday to highlight the abuses of common animal testing practices.
Dressed in nothing but a nude-coloured body suit, Jacqueline Traide volunteered to put herself through the public torment for 10 hours straight in an effort to raise awareness for a campaign highlighting the pain and cruelty inflicted on animals during laboratory tests for the cosmetics industry.
Traide’s abuses included being given injections, having her mouth clamped open, her eyes irritated with a spray, a portion of her hair shaved off and her skin braised by a man dressed as a lab technician.
Humane Society International and Lush Cosmetics, a store that heavily promotes its selection of all-natural and organic handmade products, joined forces in an effort to launch a global campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics.
“The ironic thing is that if it was a beagle in the window and we were doing all these things to it, we’d have the police and (animal welfare group) RSPCA here in minutes,” Lush campaign manager Tamsin Omond said.
“But somewhere in the world, this kind of thing is happening to an animal every few seconds on average.”
A British woman out walking her two dogs along a mountain footpath in Benalmádena (Málaga) has been attacked by an eagle, who tried to make off with one of her pets.
The bird dragged the dog towards a quarry, but the owner was able to hold onto the animal and save it, but got a nasty injury on her hand in the process.
The sudden attack by the bird of prey, which happened last Saturday, made 43-year-old Suzanne Dodd run away from the area, but said the eagle, which was wearing bells and a lead, “did not appear to have any fear of humans”.
The eagle landed on top of one of her dogs, a Jack Russell terrier, and started dragging it by the head towards a nearby quarry.
The owner, however, put up a fight, grabbing the bird by one of its wings and giving it a kick to get rid of it, whilst saying to herself : “You are not going to fly off with one of my dogs”. Immediately after the attack, Dodd put both dogs back on the lead and began running back down the mountain, but the eagle followed her and continued to attack her and her pets up to another 20 times.
She responded by shouting at the bird to make it go away, which in the end it did. The dog in question suffered a small injury to its snout, and Dodd went to the medical centre to have a minor injury to her left hand treated and to receive a tetanus jab. The victim, who described the attack as “surreal and horrible”, admitted she got very upset and “panicked”. She has made a formal complaint to the police to try to make sure similar “dangerous” attacks don’t happen on public footpaths in the future.
Experts said a woman’s 2-gallon-a-day Coca-Cola habit probably contributed to her death, a conclusion that led the soft-drink giant to note that even water can be deadly in excessive amounts.
Natasha Harris, 30, a stay-at-home mother of eight from Invercargill, died of a heart attack in February 2010. Pathologist, Dr. Dan Mornin, testified at an inquest Thursday that she probably suffered from hypokalemia, or low potassium, which he thinks was caused by her excessive consumption of Coke and overall poor nutrition.
Symptoms of hypokalemia can include abnormal heart rhythms, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Mornin said that toxic levels of caffeine, a stimulant found in Coke, also may have contributed to her death.
Harris’ partner, Chris Hodgkinson, testified that Harris drank between 2.1 and 2.6 gallons of regular Coke every day.
“The first thing she would do in the morning was to have a drink of Coke beside her bed and the last thing she would do at night was have a drink of Coke,” Hodgkinson said. “She was addicted to Coke.”
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A mother has told how a ‘toxic’ bracelet which caused a public health scare caused her to lose her boyfriend, her home and her job.
Jo Wollacott, 40, suffered abscesses, hives and hallucinations after buying the Jequirity bean bracelet for £1 on eBay two years ago.
Her life fell apart and her mental health deteriorated so much she had to be sectioned in a clinic.
Ms Wollacott thought it was down to bad luck until she read a public health warning about the bracelets, revealing the beans contained the banned toxin abrin.
The substance is prohibited under the Terrorism Act because just three micrograms could kill if swallowed.
The mother of two said: ‘Everybody around me thought my life was just spiralling out of control because I was going through a stressful time.
But now I realise that my problems started when I bought this bracelet.
When I found out hallucinations were part of the side effects of the poisoning I started to piece things together.’
Ms Wollacott, from Bridport, Dorset, wore only one of a batch of the red-and-black ‘love’ bracelets she bought from the internet auction site in April 2010.
Since sealing it in a box in December her health has been transformed.
The Health Protection Agency said: ‘Abrin is a poison and even small amounts, if ingested, can be fatal.’
Proceedings in Thailand’s parliament have been interrupted after the graphic image of a semi-naked woman flashed up on giant screens during a debate. The close-up picture of a young woman striking a provocative pose appeared on monitors as an MP addressed the house.
The images appeared in between footage of the debate, on a controversial constitutional amendment. The session was halted and the monitors hastily switched off after an MP complained.
The origin of the images is now being investigated. The Speaker, Somsak Kiatsuranont, said an official told him that the image’s appearance was the work of hackers outside of parliament.
Photographs of the incident apparently taken by an MP seem to show a woman reclining without underwear and holding her hand to her groin. MPs later resumed their debate, devoted to the second reading of a constitutional amendment aimed at paving the way for the drafting of a new constitution.
