Strange Ailments Plague Visitors to a Tropical Paradise

If you find yourself in the company of the very wealthy somewhere in the Caribbean, odds are good that you’re in St. Barthelemy, also known as St. Barth’s. In an article for Business Insider published earlier this year, Amanda Krause described its beaches and “top-tier snorkleling spots” while also noting that “the island regularly welcomes the wealthy.” That isn’t hyperbole: Forbes compiled a list of billionaires’ superyachts docked at the island.

Unfortunately, a regular influx of the planet’s wealthiest people isn’t the only notable event currently taking place at St. Barth’s. The idyllic island is also seeing an uptick in strange and uncomfortable ailments bedeviling recent visitors. Those reports are at the center of an article by Lisa Wells published this week in Air Mail.

Wells cites both “skin rashes and alleged chlamydia outbreaks” as some of the maladies that have affected visitors to St. Barth’s in recent months. Reports to that effect have come from the likes of reality TV personality Bethenny Frankel, who described getting “a bacterial infection” with “pus-y bumps” after staying at a hotel on the island. Both Air Mail and Town & Country‘s Tim Teeman also cited rumors of an STI outbreak on the island — though data cited in both articles suggests that the rumors here are more ominous than reality might reflect.

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To be fair, bacteria does tend to circulate in hotel rooms — but one expert cited in Air Mail pointed to bacteria in water as a more likely culprit for the malady Frankel described. Skin conditions are not the only issue that visitors to the island have faced: as Vanity Fair reported earlier this month, recent U.S. military operations in Venezeula caused some travelers to have their flights to or from St. Barth’s cancelled.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…