Flesh-eating bacteria eats away at man’s face

For the past 11 years, a man in Vietnam has suffered from a strange condition that caused him to lose his nose, eyes and the roof of his mouth.  After his story appeared in local media, he was finally able to get help, Central European News (CEN) reported.

Huynh Van Dat, 51, of Saigon, in southern Vietnam, was diagnosed with an unnamed flesh-eating disease. He is confined to a bed and can no longer eat properly, speak or see, but his mind is still perfectly strong, and he is able to touch and hear, his wife, Huynh Thi Trieu,  told CEN.

In 2004, Van Dat began getting nosebleeds three or four times a day. Doctors diagnosed him with a deviated nasal septum and operated on the problem with his nose partition. However, a year later he discovered that whenever he drank water, it ran into his nose through a hole in the roof of his mouth.

Van Dat underwent a second surgery several months later when the hole got bigger and spread to the nose partition, but it didn’t help. Doctors at two different hospitals subsequently told him he had a curable nose bridge failure, but he was unable to continue to pay for health care and turned to traditional, herb-based medicine.

"The disease which started with a hole in his nose simply grew, and it ate his nose, upper jaw and his eyes,” his wife told CEN. “There is no bleeding, but when he could still talk he had told us it was incredibly painful."

Van Dat’s exact treatment details, including when treatment began, were not revealed, nor were doctors’ expectations of whether they would be able to repair the extensive damage.