In a shocking incident, an 11-year-old boy from from Winter Park in the United States died after he twisted his ankle running on a treadmill. He also received a scratch that eventually spiraled out of control and the boy, Jesse Brown contracted a rare bacterial infection Strep-A, which turned worse and eventually killed him, according to Fox News.
A fifth-grade student, Brown was a healthy 11-year-old who rode motocross, and was always on the go. But few days after he twisted his ankle, the boy's family discovered his entire leg was covered in what seemed to be splotchy, purple, and red blotches that looked like bruises.
Doctors diagnosed him with group-a strep and brown had to be admitted to intensive care unit. Within a few days, the family said that the infection turned into a flesh-eating bacteria, causing Jesse’s brain to swell, and killing him.
"They said that because he rolled his ankle, that that’s likely where the infection attacked it. Because it was already weak," said his mother Megan Brown to Fox News.
Invasive strep-a cases among kids in the Unites States have been on the rise in the recent months
"Some of the speculations has been that some of those cases started after respiratory infections, and we had been seeing an uptick in those types of infections anyway post-pandemic," said Dr Candice Jones, an Orlando pediatrician to Fox News
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"So there are several routes of entry in ways that these bacteria can cause mild to severe infection and even end in death," he added.
The family of Brown said that more awareness about the disease could havehelped them in detecting the infection earlier.