Mysterious disease rots man's leg

FORTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD Ronald Chiwonza from Chiweshe is appealing for financial assistance to enable him undergo further biopsy tests into a rare and mysterious disease which has engulfed his right leg and turned it into a dark mass of flesh with an open wound that constantly drips fresh blood.

Speaking to NewsDay from a relative's house in Budiririo, Harare, Chiwonza related how he has suffered for years with a condition which remains a mystery both to his family and health experts who have attended to him so far.

"It all started in 2007 when I noticed a small pimple just below the knee of my right leg. I dismissed it since it was not painful," he said wincing with pain.

But the seemingly harmless pimple was to herald a frightening turn of events which saw the area around the pimple hardening and turning dark in colour.

"When I went to the hospital at the time, they took an X- ray and I was told that a bone or cartilage was growing alongside another," he said.

Unemployed with four school-going children, Chiwonza is a desperate man and his family has had to watch helplessly as the vicious growth invaded whole leg which he keeps covered with gauze material to keep away the flies.

"A few weeks ago skin just broke and the wound keeps growing wide open. I have no idea what this is because initial tests cleared cancer so we do not know what has attacked me," he said.

"Please help me in whichever way possible, my family needs me, but as it is I can't even look for work or tend the fields," he said with a broken voice.

Well-wishers can contact his niece Stella Munyuki on 0779 045 133 or Chipo Chiwonza on 0772725753.