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

LODWAR (AFP) — Joyce Lokonyi sits on an upturned bucket, fingers weaving palm fronds as the wind pulls her dress to expose the stump of her amputated foot, lost to a little-known disease ravaging Kenya’s poorest county.

Mycetoma is a fungal or bacterial infection that enters the body through any open wound, often as tiny as a thorn prick.

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

The fungal variety is endemic across the so-called “mycetoma belt” — including Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and northern Kenya — with funding and research desperately lacking.

Once the disease has reached the bone the only option is amputation.

“I was able to slightly walk, although the disease had eaten all my toes,” Lokonyi, 28, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

She was shunned by the local community, she said.

“They used to say that when you go to someone’s home, you will leave traces of the disease where you stand.”

She was unable to afford medication despite her husband selling off his goats, and amputation became the only option.

“I accepted because I saw that it was going to kill me,” she said, a pair of battered crutches lying on the sand beside her two-year-old daughter.

But she has struggled with the aftermath.

“I have become a good-for-nothing, I can’t work, I can’t burn charcoal, I can’t do anything,” she said.