Pic shows: The eye wherre the worm was. A teenager who had a worm in his eye for a month has had it successfully removed. Doctors in the Peruvian capital Lima used tweezers and basil leaves to pluck the one-inch worm from the 17-year-old’s eye which had become so badly swollen he could hardly see. The teenager who has been named as Jamie was infected with the worm after being bitten by a mosquito. The ophthalmologist who carried out the operation, Carolina Marchena, said the mosquito had had fly eggs on its legs and one of them had got into his eye after biting him. She added that the worm posed a serious risk to the boy's health because the swelling was near a sensitive part of the face from where infections could spread to the brain. She said: "The location of the worm from the lower lid, which was getting bigger, made the risks increase because the youth's tissue was swelling in an area close to the sinuses that's close to the delicate part which is the triangle of death." When the swelling first appeared, Jamie had gone to his local doctor in his home town of Pozuzo in central Peru where he was told it was cellulite. But after taking hundreds of different medicines which failed to work he was sent to the specialists in Lima who spotted the worm after taking an MRI scan. Dr Marchena said she decided to use basil leaves to lure the worm out because trying tweezers alone was more difficult. She laid the leaves around the boy’s eye and when the hungry worm stuck its head out she nabbed it with her tweezers and pulled the whole thing out. Jamie was later discharged and is said to be well. (ends)