An article to be published in the Medical Journal of Australia today reveals that the girl was taken to an ACT hospital emergency department last year suffering from fever, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea.

A team of seven doctors and scientists involved in the case wrote in the article that the girl was hospitalised for four days but no other family members fell ill.

Humans usually contract salmonella from contaminated food but the girl was exclusively breastfed.

Laboratory testing revealed that the girl was the first person on record in the ACT to be infected with a form of salmonella known as rubislaw. Rubislaw has been detected in various non-human sources in Australia, including water supplies and animals in northern Australia and captive reptiles in NSW and South Australia.

The baby's mother told an environmental health officer that the family had a four-year-old pet eastern bearded dragon but it was only removed from its terrarium to be held by the mother.

Samples collected from the terrarium and the household vacuum cleaner filter all contained salmonella rubislaw.

The family decided to have the lizard put down because of the health risk it posed.

For more on this story, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.