Ben Fogle Speaks About Flesh Eating Bug

Animal Park presenter and ex Castaway star Ben Fogle has spoken to the Guardian about the flesh-eating bug he contracted in Peru. It turns out that Ben had feared that he would be left mutilated, and remembered the very moment he was diagnosed and that the doctor said that it was the worst strain of leishmaniasis. The skin-eating disease was to affect the face and go straight to the nose and lips, potentially leading to face mutilation.


Ben was then put onto a course of poison to kill off the bug, which was agony, made him vomit and catch pneumonia. He developed a lesion on his arm that didn’t heal and the condition was incredibly rare. Ben then left just five days after his treatment was completed to the South Pole! The disease never reached his face, but left an impact on Ben who said the flesh-eating bug saga was ‘hideous’.


Ben was one of the first cases of ‘reality star’ after featuring on the show Castaway where 30 people were sent to live on the remote Hebridean island of Taransay. Since then the talented presenter has presented many shows, such as Countryfile, Wild on the West Coast, Crufts, Wild in Africa and One Man and His Dog, among others. In these shows he does extreme things, such as rowing across the Atlantic with gold medallist James Cracknell and skiing to the South Pole.


The Antarctic trip especially was hard, taking seven weeks and extreme physical endurance. Ben suffered from hypothermia and could have lost his nose!