Rare bone-eroding disease ruining lives in Kenya's poorest county

Joyce Lokonyi sits connected an upturned bucket, fingers weaving thenar fronds arsenic the upwind pulls her formal to exposure the stump of her amputated foot, mislaid to a little-known illness ravaging Kenya's poorest county.

Mycetoma is simply a fungal oregon bacterial corruption that enters the assemblage done immoderate unfastened wound, often arsenic tiny arsenic a thorn prick.

Starting arsenic tiny bumps nether the skin, it gradually leads to the erosion of tissue, muscles and bone.

The fungal assortment is endemic crossed the alleged "mycetoma belt" -- including Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and bluish Kenya -- with backing and probe desperately lacking.

Once the illness has reached the bony the lone enactment is amputation.

"I was capable to somewhat walk, though the illness had eaten each my toes," Lokonyi, 28, told AFP.

She was shunned by the section community, she said.

"They utilized to accidental that erstwhile you spell to someone's home, you volition permission traces of the illness wherever you stand."

She was incapable to spend medicine contempt her hubby selling disconnected his goats, and amputation became the lone option.

"I accepted due to the fact that I saw that it was going to termination me," she said, a brace of battered crutches lying connected the soil beside her two-year-old daughter.

But she has struggled with the aftermath.

"I person go a good-for-nothing, I can't work, I can't pain charcoal, I can't bash anything," she said.

- Neglected -

In Kenya's poorest county, Turkana, astir 70 percent of the colonisation lives beneath the poorness line, with healthcare constricted and hard to reach.

Mycetoma disproportionately affects agrarian communities of farmers and herders, according to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases inaugural (DNDi), a planetary NGO.

It was lone recognised arsenic a neglected illness by the World Health Organization successful 2016. Ignorance and misdiagnosis stay widespread.

"Doctors are not alert of the disease," Borna Nyaoke-Anoke, DNDi's caput of mycetoma research, told AFP.

"If you're utilized to donkeys, you don't commencement seeing zebras everywhere."

The standard of the occupation is hard to estimate, but Ekiru Kidalio, manager of Lodwar Hospital successful Turkana, said they "rarely spell a week without uncovering a case".

He added that the section population, 80 percent of which is illiterate, often turns to accepted medicine.

By the clip they travel to infirmary "the information is already precocious specified that it's not casual to reverse".

Medication is besides costly -- attraction takes up to a twelvemonth and costs arsenic overmuch arsenic $2,000 -- and comes with dizzying broadside effects.

Diagnosis and attraction are not escaped nether Kenya's overwhelmed wellness system, leaving patients astatine the mercy of overseas donors oregon seeking sums that are unimaginable for subsistence farmers.

- 'Think astir the worst' -

In Lodwar Hospital, laboratory technician John Ekai bends implicit his microscope and examines a suspected mycetoma sample.

"Mycetoma is simply a precise neglected disease, no-one is giving it attention," helium told AFP.

He has go the go-to antheral for suspected patients, handling his charges with a mischievous consciousness of humour that puts them astatine ease.

Ekai has treated much than 100 mycetoma patients successful the past year, but has seen lone 5 recoveries, with galore simply vanishing backmost into Turkana's arid plains.

He worries for those who person disappeared: "The mycetoma volition turn and turn and maybe... pb to amputation."

During AFP's visit, helium examined young parent Jennifer Ekal, 19, who had lived with the illness since she was 11.

"I was successful schoolhouse but I decided to permission due to the fact that of my foot," she said, showing her swollen and achy extremity, hidden beneath a red-and-white dishcloth.

Four doses of medicine a time appeared to beryllium helping, she said.

But arsenic she gathered up her daughter, three-year-old Bianca, she admitted she was disquieted astir the future.

"I bash not privation to deliberation astir the worst."

rbu/er/phz/jhb