Melioidosis

Melioidosis is a disease caused by a bacterium called Burkholderia pseudomallei. Melioidosis can be life-threatening. If you have melioidosis, you must get medical help quickly.

The types of infections that you may experience if you get melioidosis include skin infections, pneumonia and blood infections.

The bacterium that causes melioidosis is found around the world in warm and humid areas. In Australia, this includes the Top End of the Northern Territory, North Queensland and the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Melioidosis has also been found as far as south-west Western Australia and the Brisbane River Valley in Queensland.

You are more likely to get sick with melioidosis during the wet season (October to April).

You are at greater risk of getting sick with melioidosis if you:

• have diabetes
• drink lots of alcohol
• have kidney disease or kidney stones
• have lung disease
• take medicines that affect your immune system
• have cancer
• are more likely to be exposed to soil and water in areas containing the bacterium — this includes agriculture and construction workers, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people and ecotourists

The first sign of melioidosis is usually pneumonia, a chest infection. But melioidosis can affect different parts of your body, including your lungs, skin, spleen, liver, kidneys, brain and heart.

Symptoms usually appear between 1 and 21 days after you have been exposed. They can come on suddenly or start slowly. Symptoms can last for 2 or more months. You can experience symptoms years later, but this is rare.

If you don't get medical treatment quickly, you can get sepsis and other severe illnesses. A person may even die if they don't act fast.

Symptoms you may experience include:

• difficulty breathing
• cough with mucous
• fever
• weight loss
• non-healing skin sores
• joint pain or swelling
• confusion or headache
• difficulty passing urine (in males)

Melioidosis is caused by a bacterium called Burkholderia pseudomallei. You can get melioidosis if:

• the bacterium enters your body through broken skin
• you breathe in the bacterium from contaminated soil or water droplets
• you swallow unchlorinated water containing the bacterium, but this only occurs in some areas

There are other ways you can get infected, such as from breast milk and sexual intercourse, but these ways are rare.

Melioidosis is a life-threatening illness. If you have any of the symptoms of melioidosis, you should seek medical help quickly.

Your healthcare team will order a blood test and take swabs or samples from you. These will be sent to a laboratory to find out if you have the bacterium that causes melioidosis.

Melioidosis can be hard to diagnose because it has a wide variety of symptoms that can look similar to infections caused by other bacteria. Awareness of the disease is also limited.

If you have melioidosis, you will usually need to receive high doses of antibiotics for at least 2 weeks while in hospital. If you get infections, such as bone, joint or brain infections, you will need 1 to 2 months of antibiotics while in hospital.

After being treated in hospital, you will usually need to take antibiotics for another 3 to 6 months at home.

You can't prevent melioidosis. There is no vaccine available. You can also get melioidosis more than once.

However, you can protect yourself by:

• washing your cuts or wounds with soap and clean water
• covering your cuts or sores when you are outside
• wearing waterproof shoes in wet and muddy conditions
• wearing rubber gloves when you touch soil
• wearing a mask when you use a high-pressure hose
• drinking less alcohol

If you have pre-existing medical conditions, you should be extra careful and:

• stay indoors during storms or heavy wind and rain
• make sure your drinking and bathing water is clean
• disinfect bore water, or use rainwater and bottled water for drinking and showering
• boil water if you are not sure if the water is clean

Melioidosis can cause serious consequences, including:

• organ infections
• sepsis
• sometimes death

For more information on melioidosis, visit Queensland Health (Opens in new tab) and Northern Territory Government (Opens in new tab) websites.

You can also call the healthdirect helpline on 1800 022 222 (known as NURSE-ON-CALL in Victoria). A registered nurse is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Other languages

View the Northern Territory Government Website (Opens in new tab) available in several languages other than English.

Download audio to listen (Opens in new tab) to in different Aboriginal languages.