Natasha Lechner inquest: ‘kambo’ proponents underestimate its ‘clear and identified risks’ , NSW coroner says

The NSW coroner said Natasha Lechner (pictured) was a ‘clever, independent’ woman ‘searching for a way to cure herself’ when she died after a kambo ritual. Photograph: supplied by her father

Vulnerable people are placing their trust in self-proclaimed healers who lack basic first aid training, a coroner has warned in handing down her findings into the death of a woman after a two-person ritual involving the poisonous mucus of an Amazonian frog.

Natasha Lechner died suddenly and violently after a “kambo” ceremony in a Mullumbimby sharehouse on 8 March 2019 – a time at which the traditional South American medicine was largely unregulated in Australia.