A killer mosquito that further weakened her body after biting her. Martina died like this, at the age of 27. The West Nile virus killed her, also due to her physique already weakened by a transplant she had undergone.
The 27-year-old young woman had recently undergone a bone marrow transplant. The posthumous infection at the sting broke her young life.
Martina: death due to a mosquito
Martina Mancuso was only 27 years old and, due to the bite of a killer mosquito, she flew to the sky. To cause the infection was the bite of the so-called “mosquito of the Nile”, better known as the West Nile.
Martina was from the province of Lecco and had recently undergone a bone marrow transplant to be able to defeat leukemia, a disease from which she suffered. His body was weakened and this allowed the virus to after the mosquito bite to easily expand throughout its body, killing it.
His immune defenses were very low due to the surgery he had undergone. To tell that, a few months ago, he had undergone the transplant, was his mother Orietta. Her daughter, as she tells her, had never lost the will to live and had faced the transplant with the joy of those who, shortly afterwards, would return to live.
But the West Nile mosquito got the better of it. A sting was enough to snatch young Martina away from the affection of her family and friends. An epilogue that came yesterday after the young woman had remained hospitalized, in a coma, for a week at the Monza hospital.
West Nile: a new victim
A life, as her mother Orietta recounts, which has changed within a year. The disease, the transplant that arrives, but the immune defenses are still low. The infection, caused by the bite of this Nile mosquito, led to encephalitis in Martina. In a coma since last Saturday and the tragic end yesterday, after 7 days.
The young woman, who grew up in Colle Brianza, had been living for some time in Pescate with her boyfriend. The transplant she had undergone in the past few weeks had not yet allowed her body to have enough white blood cells. And the mosquito bite did the rest. She passed her the West Nile virus which, in her body with low defenses, had free rein to act. And the young woman passed away.
“We were waiting for the miracle, but it didn’t happen”- Martina’s mother explained, closed in her grief. A real fighter: with these simple but strong words, all her family and friends of her remember her. Even the parish priest of her country of origin wanted to remember her, inviting everyone to gather around the pain of a family that has lost a young girl who, for just over a year, had been fighting against leukemia.
A life broken by a mosquito bite: is it still possible today? Unfortunately yes, it is the young Martina is only the latest case of this “new” infection and of this mosquito that carries this virus called West Nile.