Flesh eating Virus attacks teen after childbirth

A 16-year-old girl is fighting for her life at a Montreal hospital after being diagnosed with flesh-eating disease. The teenager had just delivered a baby boy.

Doctors can't explain how Melissa Belanger became infected with necrotizing fasciitis, the medical term for the disease. They had given Belanger and her baby a clean bill of health after she gave birth on mid-March. But soon after she returned home, she was hit with high fever and abdominal pain.

"She was in great shape before she delivered, but soon after she was suffering atrocious pain," her sister, Kathy Huard, told CTV Montreal in French.

It turned out the young mother had developed the so-called flesh-eating disease, a very rare infection.

Belanger was rushed back to hospital.

"She was most likely a carrier and following the delivery somehow the infection did spread to the area which was affected by the delivery," said Dr. Ewa Sidorowicz of Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.

The hospital had to remove the teenager's reproductive organs, and may still have to amputate some of her limbs. She's currently in an induced coma.

"She's in intensive care right now, she's had several surgeries, she's on antibiotics," according to Sidorowicz.

The victim's sister says the hospital should have seen the infection coming after her delivery.

"My sister was being eaten from the inside and they didn't see it," said Huard.

But experts say the illness develops too quickly to be detectable.

"Tissues are attacked less than 24 to 48 hours after the first symptoms appear," Dr. Francois Lamothe, a microbiologist, said in French.

The disease -- which can be caused by a number of different bacteria -- destroys tissue and can lead to death within a day. There are between 90 and 200 cases of flesh-eating disease every year, and between 20 and 30 per cent of those cases are fatal.

The symptoms of the disease may be a high fever and painful swelling that feels hot. The skin around the injury may turn a purplish colour and then die.