To the Editor: In Europe and the United States, melioidosis is a rare disease, with no cases reported thus far from Slovenia. However, it is a relatively common disease in certain areas of Southeast Asia and northern Australia. Potentially fatal, this dis-ease is caused by the gram-negative bacillus Burkholderia pseudomallei, an environmental organism found in the soil and water of disease-endemic areas. Human infections are mostly ac-quired through percutaneous inocula-tion during contact with contaminated water and soil, although inhalation is also a recognized route of acquisition (1). Heavy monsoon rain is associated with severe disease course (2). Melioi-dosis was reported in some persons in-jured in the Tsunami in 2004 (3). The disease has a wide spectrum of signs and symptoms (4). Osteomyelitis is a rare manifestation. It occurs in <5% of cases and is a clinical challenge to di-agnose and treat (1,4,5).
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