Now this is how you write a headline. A bit more on the disease here: <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-leishmaniasis-lost-city-Honduras-Mosquitia-parasitic-disease/" rel="nofollow">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-leishmania...</a>
I'm actually a bit surprised that they did not suspect leishmaniasis earlier; it's not an unusual affliction for Mesosamerican deep jungle regions.
An aside, but reading the accounts of the medical treatment the explorers had to endure after is a reminder of how ineffective modern medicine is, or at least how much further we have yet to go:<p>They literally were taking poison and hoping that they would outlive the parasite under those conditions. In the case where a parasite might be hiding anywhere in your body this is probably still the only thing you can really hope to do, but it feels like trying to burn down your house to get rid of a rat infestation.
It's worth noting that the full headline reads: "Explorers find disease-cursed City of the Monkey God and nearly lose their faces to flesh-eating parasite"
As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats and vehicles, etc.<p>The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towards the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.