"The doctor told me, 'Unfortunately, the worst news is - ' and I thought: what? It can't get any worse! He said it's a variety called vianna, which is the worst strain of leishmaniasis. It affects the face. It will go straight to the nose and the lips, and he basically said it leads to facial mutilation. Those were the words he used. Then he described the treatment, which is hideous, and showed me a bottle of the poison, with a skull and crossbones on it."
Every day for five weeks, Fogle received the poison on a drip - a form of chemotherapy so powerful that some patients don't walk again for two years. Every night he would vomit. By week two his body was aching and he was in agony, and by week three he had pneumonia. Yet the doctors cleared him to go, and five days after completing the treatment Fogle set off for the south pole. -- The Guardian's G2 (15th June 2009)
Dear Sir/Madam,
As a fellow sufferer of leishmaniasis, I am becoming increasingly angered by the scaremongering and downright lies that Ben Fogle is spreading about the disease in his attempt at public sympathy and therefore book sales.
I am referring to the paragraph beginning with the quote, "The doctor told me...," and the one that follows it in today's (15th June 2009) G2.
Viannia does not directly affect the face. In five per cent of cases, it can lead to the mucocutaneous form, which does affect the face. Yes, "L. braziliensis [a viannia form] is the most important cause [of mucocutaneous leishmaniasis]," (Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine, Eddleston, et al). However, "we estimate that less than 5% of patients who develop a L. v. braziliensis primary skin lesion develop mucosal disease," (Infectious Diseases, Gorbach, et al).
The pentavalent antimonial treatment that I am assuming Ben had is a form of chemotherapy but then so is taking antibiotics. Use of the word "chemotherapy" without definition by the media is dangerously misleading.
"Some patients don't walk again for two years," says Ben about the long-term effects of his treatment. I have not found any evidence of this and neither did my consultant feel the need to mention this to me before my own treatment.
Leishmaniasis is an incredibly complex disease of the third-world. It kills many people unnecessarily in the Middle East, South America and Asia. The treatment is eighty years old, exceedingly toxic and very expensive. As leishmaniasis is a disease that affects the poor, there is no money in looking for new treatments.
I find it incomprehensible that Ben Fogle uses his platform as a celebrity to do nothing but whine about his own (relatively lavish) experiences in this latest wave of interviews, rather than focus on the twelve million people around the world who share his symptoms yet have no chance of treatment or even proper diagnosis.
Regards,
Girish Gupta, Manchester
http://www.justgiving.com/jammastergirish-msf
No comments:
Post a Comment