Daily Times

DHAKA: A young Bangladeshi girl, with bark-like warts growing on her face, could be the first female ever to have the so-called ‘tree man syndrome’, doctors studying the rare condition said on Tuesday.

Ten-year-old Sahana Khatun has the tell-tale gnarled growths sprouting from her chin, ear and nose, but doctors at Dhaka’s Medical College Hospital are still conducting tests to establish if she has the unusual skin disorder.

“Less than half a dozen people worldwide have ‘epidermodysplasia verruciformis’, but none so far have been women,” said Samanta Lal Sen, the head of the hospital’s burn and plastic surgery unit.

“We believe she is the first woman to suffer from this disease,” Sen told AFP.

Her father, a poor labourer from Bangladesh’s rural north, said that he didn’t worry too much when the first warts appeared on his daughter’s face about four months ago. But, as the warts spread rapidly, he grew concerned and brought Khatun from their village to Dhaka for treatment.

“We are really poor. My daughter lost her mother when she was only six. I really hope that the doctors will remove the barks from my beautiful daughter’s face,” her father Mohammad Shahjahan told AFP.

Another of Khatun’s doctors said that the young patient was displaying a milder form of the disease, and it was hoped she would make a quicker recovery than those in the more advanced stages.

The hospital has been treating one man with a serious case of the disease for the better part of a year, conducting 16 surgical procedures to remove giant warts from his hands and legs.

But, doctors told AFP that for the first time in a decade, Bajandar had been able to touch his wife and daughter last month, and was almost ready to leave the ward.