Three children in Mumbai found infected with Black Fungus and had to go through surgery to remove an eye each. Mucormycosis or Black Fungus cases in children are a worrying sign as indicated by the doctors. The infection is said to target COVID-19 patients with comorbidities like diabetes and is dangerous, even after the recovery from the virus.
The three children of age 4, 6 and 14 years were operated upon in two hospitals of Mumbai. The first two children were not diabetic but the 14-year-old was. A fourth kid, of 16-years-old, after recovering from the virus became diabetic and a part of her stomach was found infected with Black Fungus.
Dr. Jesal Sheth, Senior Consultant Paediatrician at Fortis Hospital said that they saw two girls infected with Black Fungus in the second wave of coronavirus pandemic, and both were diabetic, after the 14-year-old girl came to them, within 48 hours her eyes had turned black and the fungus was spreading to her nose too, fortunately it did not reach the brain. The girl was treated for over six weeks but lost her eye due to the fungal infection.
Dr. Sheth mentioned about the 16-year-old child, who was healthy a month ago and she had recovered from COVID-19 as well, but she was not a diabetic patient. Somehow she ended coming to them with diabetes suddenly. And her intestines started bleeding. When the doctors did an angiography, they found that the Black Fungus had infected the blood vessels near her stomach.
The children who were younger and did not suffer diabetes were admitted to Mumbai’s KBH Bachooali Ophthalmic and ENT Hospital, both the children had COVID-19. Dr. Prithesh Shetty, Oculoplasty, Ocular Oncology and Ocular Prosthetic at the hospital said that the Black Fungus was spreading in their eyes and if they had not removed the eyes, then the lives of those children would have been in danger. They were already blind in one eye and it was hurting them severely. One of the child had come up to them in the December month previous year, whereas the second case came during the second wave of COVID-19.
Black Fungus infection needs to be caught as early as possible because it is aggressive and dead tissue has to be scrapped away. Due to the black fungus, the doctors had to remove patients nose, eyes, and even jaws to prevent it from reaching to the brain.
With the COVID-19 and other conditions, a dangerous phenomenon called the cytokine storm can occur where the immune system goes into an overdrive, resulting in damaging the organs, so the doctors have been prescribing steroids to reduce immune response, but that weakens the body’s defences and increases the sugar level, which the funguses thrive off.
