Father dies from rare flesh-eating infection after getting tiny cut on his arm



A father died of a rare flesh-eating disease which infected his body through a tiny paper cut on his arm, an inquest has heard.

Tony Williamson, 60, developed the deadly blood infection necrotizing fascilitis, which affects fewer than one in a million people.

Within six days of cutting his arm, toxic bacteria had destroyed parts of the inner layer of his skin.

Carole and Tony Williamson: The former engineer died within days of being infected by a flesh-eating bug

Necrotizing fascilitis is a more severe strain of the bug which struck down TV presenter Ben Fogle while he was filming in Peru earlier this year.

Today Mr Williamson’s widow Carole, also 60, spoke of her devastation.

Her husband of 30 years, who was in France on business when he died, had a year earlier been given the all-clear after battling lung cancer.

The couple had planned to retire next year to their home in the French countryside.

Mrs Williamson, a drama teacher, said: ‘It was such a small cut when he left for France, I didn’t think twice about it and nor did he. It was a quarter of an inch if that.

‘To think that he had died from it was just unbelievable. For weeks afterwards all I could do was read about this disease.

‘Tony was a loving husband and father, and we had plans to retire to France. I just wish he had been forced into seeing a doctor earlier.’

NF is usually caused by the common bacteria Streptococcus, which can enter the body through the smallest of cuts or bruises.

It makes its way to through the tissue and causes an infection which eats its way through the layers of the skin and down to the muscle.

Unlike the more common blood infection septicaemia, there are no tell-tale marks on the skin, and the cut itself may not appear to be as badly infected as the skin underneath.

Tony and Carole on holiday in their younger days: They had planned to retire to France next year

The mortality rate is around 70 per cent, as patients suffer shock, collapse and organ failure.

Patients can only be saved by early diagnosis, and often drastic surgery to remove all of the infected area.

Mr Williamson, a former aircraft engineer, was the boss of a removal firm, and was in France for one week, on a job for a family in Cannes.

Within a day of leaving Britain he was suffering flu-like symptoms, feeling nauseous and gradually become weaker and delirious.

His colleague on the trip told the inquest in Eastbourne the cut on his arm had become a large open wound around two inches long the day before he died.

On arrival in Cannes, Mr Williamson collapsed outside his lorry and an ambulance was called by his client.

He was rushed to intensive care, where doctors did not initially know what was making him ill.

Mrs Williamson, who lives with the couple’s son James, in Seaford, East Sussex, was contacted, but her husband did not survive the night and the infection lead to a fatal heart attack on July 10.

‘I rushed to France but it was too late’, she said.



‘When I finally heard what had killed him – necrotizing fascilitis - I had no idea what it was. He had been sick, but thought it was food poisoning.

"I want to tell the world this bacteria exists and that it can, without treatment, kill in such a short space of time, so I can stop other people being widowed by it.’

A post mortem examination in England confirmed NF as the cause of his death.



Today East Sussex coroner Alan Craze recorded a verdict of accidental death.

He said: ‘This was a tragic case and an extremely rare case. I have only seen one similar case in 10 years. The bacteria ended his body through a trauma, albeit a very small one, and the chances of saving him beyond 48 hours of his death were very, very slim indeed.’

Leading economist David Walton, a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, died of the disease within 24 hours of diagnosis in 2006.