Flesh-eating bug claims life of boy

From The Scotsman

A PROMISING teenage hockey player has died of a rare flesh-eating bug while being treated in hospital for leukaemia.

Andrew Stewart, 15, from Dunfermline, died from necrotising fasciitis last Wednesday, less than two weeks after he had been admitted to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh with a form of leukaemia his parents had been told he had an 80 per cent chance of surviving.

His parents said the cancer treatment had weakened Andrew's immune system, making him vulnerable to the disease, which doctors believe had been lying dormant in his body.

Necrotising fasciitis is a rare condition which strikes when the otherwise benign streptococcus bacterium - a common cause of sore throats - invades the soft tissue under the skin.

It has a fatality rate of about 40 per cent. More...