At least two Boy Scout campers who returned from a recent trip with fevers, chills and a cough have been hospitalized for exposure to a rare and unusual disease linked to bird and bat droppings found in the soil, spurring involvement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, our media partners at The Advocate report.
St. Francisville resident Emiley Bonano has been battling histoplasmosis — a condition caused by inhaling a fungus found in bird and bat waste — since she traveled to Camp Avondale, located in East Feliciana Parish, with her little brother’s Boy Scout troop in early November, the Advocate reports.
Photo courtesy of The Advocate
She became sick with flu-like symptoms about a week after their return and went to the doctor, but didn’t think a recent camping trip significant enough to mention as a possible cause for her unrelenting symptoms, the newspaper reports.
To read The Advocate’s story with all the details, click here.
