A woman bitten by a mosquito while on holiday in Australia was left paralysed from the neck down

Ms Porter was two weeks into the holiday of a lifetime in Australia when she developed Guillain-Barre syndrome - a disease which causes the body attacks its own nervous system.

She first noticed numbness in one toe, but within four days she could barely walk.Doctors told her the fast-moving paralysis could freeze her diaphragm within hours and that there was a chance she could die.

Ms Porter watched helplessly as she lost control of her entire body within hours. She was unable to feel her hands, feet or legs - or move anything below her neck.‘Every time I went to sleep at night I wondered if I might not wake up,’ said Ms Porter, from Crawley, West Sussex.

‘All I could think was I'm 23 - I don't want to die.’

Ms Porter flew to Western Australia in March 2012 and spent seven months working in a cafe to save up for a trip down the country’s east coast.

'A mosquito bite left me paralysed': Woman, 23, nearly died after being bitten while on holiday in Australia | Mail Online