Humans are accidental hosts, and they become infested when they ingest raw or inadequately cooked fish or meat. The ingestion of raw snake meat might be considered unusual in the United States, but we are not immune to this kind of problem.
Some people like to consume raw meat under the guise of steak tartare or even rare hamburgers.
Sushi and sashimi consist of raw fish, and we are at the mercy of the sushi chef to be certain that no parasitized fish were prepared. One might think that the recent scare regarding Escherichia coli in our meat supply and Salmonella in chickens and eggs would convince most of us to process our animal proteins more thoroughly. Clearly, meticulous cooking of food would eliminate all these diseases. Gnathostomiasis is to be differentiated clinically from sparganosis, a form of creeping eruption caused by larvae from the suborder Spiruroidea. This somewhat similar disease is prevalent in Japan, as well as in other parts of Asia and subtropical Africa.