Melioidosis is a condition that occurs when someone comes into contact with certain bacteria in infected water or soil. Some medical professionals also call this condition “Whitmore’s disease,” after the pathologist who first described it. Although melioidosis is most common in southeast Asia and northern Australia, several other countries have also reported it, according to...
by Wayne Lewis, University of California, Los Angeles Melioidosis is a tropical disease that claims an estimated 90,000 lives worldwide each year. There is no vaccine, and current treatments are hampered by the ability of the bacterium that causes the disease to resist even the strongest antibiotics. Hardy and lethal, that bacterium, Burkholderia pseudomallei, is...
The devastating Townsville floods have receded but the clean up is being complicated by the appearance of a serious bacterial infection known as melioidosis. One person has died from melioidosis and nine others have been diagnosed with the disease over the past week. People typically become sick between one and 21 days after being infected....
