A schoolgirl was struck down by a flesh-eating bacteria that caused an angry red palm-sized ulcer across her knee.
Ella Crofts, 13, is still recovering from mycobacterium ulcerans six months after the festering sore appeared in April and didn’t respond to antibiotics.
The teenager’s mother Lucy Burns said when her daughter first complained of a sore knee it was just a little swollen – but soon looked like a ‘zombie leg’.
Ella Crofts, 13, was struck down by flesh-eating bacteria Mycobacterium Ulcerans
‘A couple of days later it started to get the smallest of sores like a scab or a carpet burn and then a bit of redness around it,’ she told 9 News.
Soon the pain was so intense she couldn’t walk properly and had to limp or walk around on crutches and only strong painkillers made it bearable.
Hospital swab tests were negative, but her parents, who both have medical backgrounds, convinced doctors to order a biopsy.
Once the frightening disease was discovered, Ella had three operations to cut out the dead tissue around her knee but she was still limping.
Infectious disease experts called Mycobacterium Ulcerans an epidemic needed to be tackled quickly before it got out of hand.
It caused an angry red palm-sized ulcer across her knee that left her limping for six months
Once the frightening disease was discovered, Ella had three operations to cut out the dead tissue around her knee but she was still limping
It is common Africa but mysteriously exploded in parts of Victoria with 240 new cases last year and nine each week in the past few months.
Ella wrote on a petition calling for more funding into the disease that it creates the toxin mycolactone that decreases immune system function and results in tissue death.
‘This infection comes from the same family as leprosy and tuberculosis. How the disease is spread is unknown. There is currently no prevention against it,’ she wrote.
Ella’s doctor Daniel O’Brien said the number of serious cases like hers doubled in the past five years and even renowned experts like her were at loss to explain it.
‘Bottom line is we had 70 percent more cases last year than we have ever had and we are more than double this year already on last year,’ he said.
She is one of hundreds infected with the disease across Victoria as it grows to epidemic proportions, despite only being common in Africa
‘We don’t know why. I can only suspect that the organism has adapted or mutated or evolved so it is becoming more virulent and causing more severe cases.’
Mycobacterium ulcerans’ march through Australia started on Phillip Island in the 1990s before appearing on the Bellarine Peninsula before moving to Mornington.
Dr O’Brien said researchers were distressed and overwhelmed trying to contain the disease as they don’t know how it was spread.
Theories included mosquitoes, infected possums and other animals or even getting into wounds via the soil.
‘But we don’t actually know where it lives, why it’s there and how it gets spread to humans. How can we possibility halt an epidemic when we don’t have that basic information?’ he said.