A six-month-old baby suffered eczema so bad it looked like she had been shot.
Nikoletta Pezos recently returned home after spending six days in the hospital due to a severe outbreak that covered her entire body.
The eczema initially appeared on Nikoletta’s stomach and rapidly spread, resulting in large boils that resembled bullet wounds when they burst.
In addition to the eczema, Nikoletta developed a serious staph infection, which led to her taking intravenous antibiotics to treat the condition.
Her mother, Antigoni, said Nikoletta also had to contend with pneumonia during her time at hospital.
The young mother, who works as a teacher in Adelaide, said Nikoletta would wake up every hour in agony from itching.
“It’s been horrible watching her go through that at such a young age as well,” Ms Pezos said via the Advertiser.
“You can’t explain to her, ‘this is temporary, we’ll be fine’. It’s pretty heart-wrenching.”
She said she is now worried how the warmer weather will impact her daughter’s skin.
“Being in Australia and her being such a young baby, you want them to be exposed to water … I’m worried about how we’re going to have her at the beach, how are we going to have her in the sun?” she said.
“We don’t know what’s going to be a real problem until we get there.”
Australia has one of the highest incidences of eczema in the world.
An estimated 1.6 million people across the country live with eczema, but the latest figures show nearly one-third of Australians will suffer from the skin condition at some stage in their lives.
The Eczema Association of Australia (EAA) found more than half of current eczema sufferers describe their condition as “chronic”, and 72 per cent say weather is the biggest trigger for flare ups.