A case of a Buruli flesh eating ulcer is a cause for concern in Victoria, Australia.
Health services have so far reported 159 cases this year, or three times as much as in the whole of 2016. State services of Victoria are warning of a growing epidemic.
This time, the victim was a 13-year-old school girl who suffered from the flesh-eating ulcer.
Ms. Ella Crofts, from the small town of Tyabb, said it all began with a sore knee that slowly developed into an open wound?Ella said: "Slowly it got worse, with my knee becoming swollen and inflamed, until one day, the skin started breaking down. I've had six months of quality medical care and still have not recovered."
The girl has gone through no less than three operations as well as months of powerful antibiotics to treat the flesh-eating disease.
A professor of the Geelong and Royal Melbourne Hospital confirmed the seriousness of the spread of this infectious disease: "The bacteria gets under the skin and slowly eats its way through the skin and the tissue underneath a limb until it's treated. The longer you leave it the worse it gets, it's a progressive, destructive infection."
Ella wants to warn her fellow schoolgirls for the dangers of the disease and therefore has set up a petition calling for increased funding into possible remedies. "Why are the numbers in Victoria increasing so rapidly? Why is it moving? It used to be common on the Bellarine Peninsula, now it's mostly on the Mornington Peninsula," she said says in her petition.
Due to its remote location and its peculiar fauna and flora, the Australian continent is a frequent recipient of diseases, epidemics, and viruses. Earlier this year it was faced with the Borne Ross Virus which spread through mosquitos and back in 2009 there was a dengue fever outbreak in the West of Australia.
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