Buruli Ulcer project under way

The international humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and partner organisations have started a project on the Buruli Ulcer disease in the central Cameroonian districts of Ayos and Akonolinga, MSF reported on Thursday. The project, which started earlier this month, followed an assessment by Cameroon's Ministry of Health, Aide aux Lepreux Emmaus-Suisse (ALES, a Swiss agency helping leprosy patients), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and MSF in 2001. Buruli Ulcer was first detected in 1948 among farmers in Australia but similar cases were described by Sir Albert Cook in Uganda in 1897. The condition is named after an area of Uganda which was the site of many cases in the 1960s. Caused by "Mycobacterium ulcerans", Buruli Ulcer is one of the most common mycobacterial infections in human beings, after tuberculosis and leprosy, according to WHO. The disease eats through the flesh for weeks or months, without pain, until a crater (ulcer) appears. Drugs are generally ineffective and many patients have to undergo surgery and amputation. The Cameroon assessment found 400 cases in a population of 100,000, at least 200 of which required surgical treatment. More than half of the cases were in children under 15 years of age. "Based on these results, MSF decided, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health, to start a project based on treatment and information," the humanitarian agency noted in Thursday's statement. "The first stage is to run for one year. Upon completion, the national health structures should be able to continue the established activities independently," MSF said. "No one is sure where the bacterium live or how it enters the body," said Kingsley Asiedu, head of the WHO's Buruli Ulcer programme. "Somehow the bacteria pass through the skin, disable the alarms of the immune system and release a corrosive toxin." In March, WHO said the occurrence of the disease had increased rapidly in several West African countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and Nigeria. Thousands of cases had been reported with more than 50 percent of them in children under 15 years of age, it added.