Girl in 'Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho' segment passes away

"Lynlyn," the girl who was featured in a Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho segment, has passed away after a long fight with a parasitic disease that has rendered her nearly immobile for almost two decades.

In a Facebook post, KMJS said Lynlyn passed away at 5 a.m. on Tuesday after 17 years of fighting filariasis or elephantiasis, a lymphatic disease caused by filarial parasites transmitted through mosquitoes.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said people with filariasis "are not only physically disabled, but suffer mental, social and financial losses contributing to stigma and poverty."

Lynlyn's condition began to manifest a year after her mother left her at the age of five. Due to poverty, she was moved from home to home and at points almost killed for her disease.

Things came to a head when residents of a town she stayed in almost burned her alive out of fear that her disease — only communicable through mosquito bites — would infect them.

Lynlyn passed away in Zamboanga City Medical Center, Zamboanga City. —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News