A teenage girl who sheds her skin every two months because of an ultra-rare condition has been cruelly likened to a ‘human snake.’
Shalini Yadav, 16, needs to constantly smear her body with moisturizer to stop it from hardening and seizing up.
The youngster’s family are so poor they cannot afford that and need to spend their money on providing food for eight people including her grandparents.
The Indian teenager had been thrown out of school because of her extraordinary appearance.
Doctors have diagnosed Erythroderma, an inflammatory skin disease also known as ‘red man syndrome’, but are unable to treat it.
It causes the skin over almost the entire body to become scaly and flake off. Shalini has shed her skin every 45 days since she was born.
She has to soak her body in water every hour — night and day — and smear himself with lotion every three hours to prevent drying out.
Her desperate mother Devkunwar said: “Shalini is suffering from the disease since childhood. “We saw several doctors but none of them could cure her and her condition has continued to get worse.
“I feel so helpless when I see her skin coming off, causing excruciating pain to my child.
“This disease is not killing her but taking her life bit by bit.
“We have no idea where to go to and who to consult.”
Devkunwar, a care-giver in a state-funded community centre, is so heart-broken she says death would be kinder to her daughter. She added: “It is better to die than living a life of misery.”
Shalini’s two siblings Sejal, 15, and Price, eight, are normal with no such complication.
Her father Rajbahadur, a daily wage worker, said: “It’s really sad because she was not born normally and has scaly skin all over her body. “It is similar to being severely burnt, from the sole of her feet to her head.”
Shalini said: “I wanted to study but they threw me out of school as the children would get scared by seeing my face.
“Everybody in the family is suffering because of my medical condition. “But what is my fault? What sin did I commit to be cursed with such a disease. I want to live.”
Culled from mirror.co.uk
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