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Australia Today

Victoria Is Experiencing a Flesh-Eating Ulcer 'Epidemic'

Tissue-destroying Buruli ulcers are on the rise, and researchers have no idea how to stop them.
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A frankly terrifying flesh-eating ulcer is rapidly spreading throughout coastal regions of Victoria and now reaching “epidemic” proportions, according to a new report published in the Medical Journal of Australia today.

Mycobacterium ulcerans, commonly known as the Buruli ulcer, is a highly infectious disease that begins with a painful lump under the skin and progresses to a literally tissue-eating infection that can in its worst cases require limb amputation. The disease, treatable with antibiotics in its early stages, is usually found in tropical regions of Africa.

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But for reasons unknown to researchers, incidences are on the rapid rise in Victoria, Australia. And nowhere else in the country.

“It seems to occur in very specific areas of Victoria,” Burali ulcer expert Paul Johnson told The Guardian. “If you don’t enter an endemic area, you don’t get the disease. But what is it about the area that contains it, and what happens to you that means you pick the disease up from that area? Those are the big questions we’ve been asking.”

Incidences of infection are most common on Victoria's Bellarine and Mornington peninsulas, where more than 200 cases were reported over 2016 and 2017. Johnson and his colleagues believe the disease is being spread by possums and mosquitos living in those regions. Except they’re not sure how animals and insects picked up the disease in the first place.

“Our hypothesis is really that this is a disease of possums,” Johnson said. “It sweeps through possums and contaminates the local environment through their poo including contaminating mosquitos, and people are picking it up predominantly from biting insects, and maybe directly from possums.”

Wherever it came from, seems like we maybe need to get this shit under control ASAP. The researchers don’t mince words: the spread of disease is only going to get worse if we don’t start allocating resources towards stopping it.

Victoria is facing “a rapidly worsening epidemic of a severe disease without knowing how to prevent it,” the MJA article concludes. “We therefore need an urgent response based on robust scientific knowledge… The time to act is now, and we advocate for local, regional and national governments to urgently commit to funding the research needed to stop the Buruli ulcer.”