Yeah I guess that's what it comes down to. A light abrasion is not worth noting, and therefore a pointless "booboo", but could become - if untreated - a serious infection.
So far so good, and after taking the other points made here into consideration I would even go so far to say they could be able to make other debuffs worse.
So what about that:
Make abrasions influence (speed up) infection percentage (if you already have one), maybe even at a slightly growing rate over time.
If you have no infection, it does raise the chance to get one slightly.
So if you treat it fast it was only that lil booboo that did nothing.
If you don't treat it, you take the risk of letting things grow bad, but not in a too serious way to get out of hands in the middle of a battle (like debuffs like slow/stun tend to do)