Subject: SOS, help save the Chinese girl's life

From: [email-masked] (Chinese Information and Networking Association)
Date: 9 Feb 1995 21:36:25 -0800

Call For Help!

Non-infection Necrosis? Infectious necrosis? or
Localized menifestation of an unknown systemic disease?

 ---  A young Chinese girl is slowly being eaten away by
a strange disease.

A young  Chinese girl suffering from a mysterious infection
that causes progressive necrosis of her right forearm and
left hand is arousing great concern in the whole country.
After fighting the disease for nearly four months without
any success, doctors in Beijing are appealing for emergency
help from colleagues arround the world.

The thirteen year old girl, Yang Xiaoxia comes from
a poor farm family in Shangdong province in east China.
The girl has been tortured by the mysterious disease
for 8 months. The disease first began as a black spot
under a finger nail of her right hand suspected by a
local clinic as a stab wound caused by small stick or barb.
A local doctor tried to get something out of the black spot,
but thing got worse. She began to suffer from paronychiais
and the infection soon spread to the whole right forearm
and the mid-finger on her left hand.

After treatments in five different hospitals in provincial
capital Jinan had all failed, the girls parents took
her to Beijing. She has hospitalized in a Beijing military
hospital since early November, but the disease
continued to progress despite all out efforts by the
city's most elite doctors. The doctors have to amputate
one third of her right forearm and three fingers of
her left hand. Although the spreed of the infection
seems a little bit slower, still there was no sign the
infection will stop.

What puzzled the whole medical community is that
from the appearance of the affected surfaces it looks
like an infection, but the infection have
failed to response to any exsiting antibiotics
and hyperbaric oxgen treatment. Bacterior cultures
have always been negtive.

Officals of the city public health bureau have
invited experts to probe into the mystirous disease
and welcomes any suggestions from doctors
around the world.

We will continue to update information on
Yang Xiaoxia's condition.  If you have any
suggestions, please send e-mail to the
following address:

[email-masked]

Dr. Xiangdong Huang

Institute of Medical Information,
27 Taiping Road,
Beijing 100039,
China.
Tel:86-1-8215603
Fax:86-1-8213044