An 18-month-old girl has survived after a flesh-eating bacteria attacked her lungs.
Amarli Marshall, from Perth, was diagnosed with Streptococcus Necrotising Pneumonia while on a ten-day holiday in Thailand with her family.
‘She had a team of doctors working on her; a lung doctor, a kidney doctor, a surgeon, a blood doctor, and an infectious disease specialist, so she had a team of people trying to determine what was wrong,’ mum Sharna Marshall told Colliemail.
Sharna said she first noticed Amarli wasn’t well on the plane when she started sniffling.
‘Amarli got sick while we were there, with what we thought was a bit of a cold or something like that,’ said Sharni.
Adding, ‘We had a doctor come and check her in the hotel and he said she was OK. We were still a bit worried so we ended up taking her to Phuket hospital on July 3.’
After an initial diagnosis of pneumonia, things got worse. Although doctors couldn’t tell Amarli’s parents exactly what was wrong with their daughter, they were told ‘she had very low red blood cells, very low white blood cells, and very low platelet count.’
The family was flown to Bangkok hospital, with Amarli in a critical condition.
‘In the end she had Streptococcus Necrotising Pneumonia, which means it was flesh eating.’
To stop the disease spreading, Amarli underwent surgery to remove part of her lung. Following surgery, she was also diagnosed with renal failure.
‘It was just one thing after another,’ said Sharni.
Thankfully, Amarli was discharged from hospital on August 5, but she can’t fly home until doctors give her the all clear.
Doctors say they are unsure how she contract the disease, but Sharna said ‘they [the doctors] think she may have picked it up on the plane in incubation.’
Friends and family have set up a Go Fund Me page to support the family.
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