The Tribune

By DANA SMITH

Tribune Staff Reporter

dsmith@tribunemedia.net

HEALTH Minister Perry Gomez said he has heard “the rumour” of a Bahamian man having been infected with a deadly ‘flesh-eating’ bacteria but “no evidence” has been shown to him to prove the reports are true.

The victim’s relatives had told The Tribune he contracted the disease on Saturday while in the coastal waters off Andros and was currently being treated at a private hospital in Nassau. One family member described it as a “very, very serious situation” and said the victim was “very ill.”

The salt water borne bacteria, called vibrio vulnificus, has been making headlines in Florida – where it has killed 10 people and infected another 27 this year. Dr Gomez said yesterday he would be “very surprised” if the vibrio vulnificus is behind the disease, as such an organism, to his knowledge, does not cause such symptoms.

“I have heard the rumour myself but I have had no evidence shown to me that this is true here in the Bahamas,” he said.

“The organism that I was told was said to be in Florida, was said to be a vibrio and to my knowledge the vibrio organisms are not flesh eating organisms, so (it) must be something else. The vibrio organism tends to cause diarrhoea diseases not diseases that are termed ‘flesh-eating’.

“They (flesh-eating diseases) are more due to ground deposit organisms like streptococcus and staphylococcus and so I’d be very surprised if vibrio is implicated in a flesh eating case. I don’t know of this to be so in our country and so I leave it as that.”

The minister said flesh-eating diseases should not be a cause for concern for Bahamians provided they take “necessary precautions in day-to-day life”.

“People who get these problems are people who get problems with it in lacerations of the leg and you might be so susceptible and have an unusual organism around - but I think the risk is very, very small; very, very small,” Dr Gomez said.

“We’ve had this sort of thing in the Bahamas over the years and I can think in my 30 year span at Princess Margaret, there were two cases that I know of over the years, of flesh-eating occurring, so called flesh-eating but it’s usually strains of streptococci or staphylococci - not vibrio.”

Dr Gomez said the Bahamas is however capable of handling instances of flesh-eating diseases caused by those two strains.

“Early diagnosis and surgery is really the approach to treating people with flesh-eating disease. Early diagnosis, antibiotics (and) surgery,” he said. 

Asked if the Ministry was doing an investigation into the reported cause or taking any precautionary steps, Dr Gomez said: “This is highly individual. There’s nothing you can do at a national level to direct against flesh eating organisms.”