The only treatment is excision and closure, which can be disconfiguring, or amputation. Antibiotics have not yet worked. Treatment is expensive, and long. No race is immune. It is not communicable from patient to patient.
Environmental factors appear to play a role.
Ghana's Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research is playing a lead research role with the US Centers for Disease Control. We can all agree that HIV-AIDS is a terrible scourge, and that Africans are suffering in an unbearable way from it. One of the many problems caused by HIV-AIDS is that the focus of attention it is getting these days is detracting attention away from a broad array of other diseases affecting Africa, many of which can be handled with well constructed primary health care systems and affordable and plentiful medicines that are now on the shelf. Another problem has to do with emerging diseases, one of which is known as the Buruli ulcer. We show this to you first, because for those of you with a weak stomach, you can probably read on but there will be pictures you might find distasteful.