'Bruise' a flesh-eating killer.

Byline: By Will Oliphant

A PREVIOUSLY healthy delivery driver was killed by a flesh-eating bug as his horrified family looked on helplessly.

Tony Hall, aged 61, of Blooms bury Walk, Nechells, Birmingham, thought he had strained a muscle in his shoulder, but an inquest heard he had actually been infected with necrotising fasciitis.

Despite visits from paramedics and a family doctor, who prescribed pain killers, no-one knew what was causing Mr Hall's severe pain on October 2 and he refused to go to hospital.

Mr Hall was rushed to Heartlands Hospital two days later when he developed dark bruises all over one side of his body.

His partner, Michele Witherington, aged 40, told Birmingham's assistant deputy coroner, Sally Scanlon: "Doctors came to A&E because the bruise was aggressively growing. He went straight to theatre after that."

That was the last time Michele got to see her partner of 22 years awake as he never regained consciousness after surgery.

Mr Hall died on October 11 despite hours of surgery and blood transfusions over the course of a week.

The family's GP, Dr Iftekhar Majeed, said he saw Mr Hall at his home the day after he started complaining of pain, prescribing strong painkillers and telling him to go to hospital if his condition worsened.

The GP told the inquest that the hard-to-diagnose disease was extremely aggressive.

"If you draw a line around an infected area, the bruising will sometimes have moved outside of the marked area within half an hour."

Treatment for the rare disease, caused by the same bacteria which can cause tonsillitis, involves large doses of antibiotics and surgery to cut out infected flesh.

Dr Majeed added: "Sometimes surgeons will see that while they are cutting out infected flesh, nearby areas of healthy flesh have already become infected.

"It can literally dissolve in front of your eyes."

He told the inquest that there were only about 500 cases a year, with a 20 per cent mortality rate.

The disease usually gets into the system through a cut or broken skin. But in this case there had been no trauma.

The disease caused so much damage that Mr Hall's body was unable to pump enough blood to vital organs.

Ms Scanlon recorded a verdict of death by natural causes.