Schoolboy’s sore throat turns out to be a leech growing inside him

A schoolboy who was suffering for some time with a sore throat was somewhat stunned to find out that the source of his pain was more than a simple infection when doctors removed a leech from his throat. 

Xiaobo Chien, 11, from China’s Sichuan Province turned up at his doctor's surgery complaining of a sore throat, and it was soon discovered that he had a seven cm long leech growing inside his throat. 

The boy had reportedly been walking home from school one day when he felt thirsty and stopped to have a drink of water from a bucket. What he didn't realise is that the bucket had leech larvae in it, and it would go on to cause him some severe pain. 

Doctors said they leech had attached itself to respiratory tract and had been there for some weeks, growing bigger and bigger as it fed on his blood. It's no surprise that after all that he was suffering from a sore throat and some dizziness!

"At first we thought he had flu as he said he was feeling dizzy and had a sore throat," said the boy’s mother, Xiang Tung, 33.

"He hadn’t told us about the water-drinking so it never occurred to us that he may have picked up something."

The good news for the youngster, who is unsurprisingly adamant that he has learned his lesson about drinking from a bucket of water in the future, is that the parasite had not managed to cause any sort of infection inside his respiratory system, meaning that doctors were able to simply remove it without too much problem.