Salt Lake tribune-

KACNGUAN, Sudan -- Martha Halim lives in fear. She is terrified of the moon's phases, afraid of eating and fearful of fires, rivers and ponds.
She is stricken with mysterious seizures that frighten her from eating. Her parents have tried everything. She has been to a hospital, seen a Western doctor and taken anti-epileptic drugs.
The 13-year-old has even visited witch doctors. She followed the advice of one, crawling through a termite mound while her parents slit the throat of a goat.
She gives a grim description of what it's like when her disease overpowers her.
"When it comes, it looks like a black cloud but in the shape of a human," said Martha. "That's all I know. At the end, I find myself on the floor."
Martha suffers from a strange affliction called "nodding syndrome," apparently unique to southern Sudan. Its young victims tend to nod vigorously at the sight of food. The condition often progresses to severe seizures, mental retardation and death.
Martha fell into a fire last year when she had a seizure while cooking. Her right leg is disfigured by a severe burn from knee to foot; she protected it with a soiled beige rag.
Her father, Neen Majak, says he has nearly given up hope.
The affliction, which has been found in about 300 children so far, baffles experts. The World Health Organization began investigating it about two years ago, around a year after Martha's symptom first appeared.
Peter Spencer, an American neurotoxicologist who has investigated the condition for WHO, encountered another 13-year-old girl with a bizarre variation of the illness.
"I was able to demonstrate with her that she was a regular nodder with local food and by contrast she did not nod when eating a variety of American food -- candy bars or whatever. It was absolutely staggering," he said.

Experts say a few children recover. Doctors with WHO think the disease may be related to a disorder seen in Uganda called Nakalanga syndrome, which also has symptoms of convulsions, stunted growth and sometimes nodding.
Spencer's investigation has found no obvious environmental causes. He wouldn't rule out a food connection, but he said it is unlikely.
"What was striking is that the majority of the population that is affected by this disease in southern Sudan has a different lifestyle from the itinerant Dinka people, who are sort of herders. They are not affected by this disease," he said.
Spencer said one theory that cannot be ruled out, although it is not a leading suspicion, is the disease could have come from eating monkeys. Ebola can be spread to humans by chimpanzees. AIDS also made its way from primates to humans"