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A California woman is urging the public to avoid standing water after she says her son was infected with a flesh-eating bacteria and died.
Jeff Bova, 41, died Friday after wading into standing water with a small cut on his right arm last month while chasing his dog into a pond.
“Stay away from standing water, especially after it rains because there is just a ton of bacteria in it,” Susan Mc Intyre, Bova’s mother, told NBC News on Tuesday.
“If you get any kind of cut, and it starts getting red, go to the doctor immediately — don’t wait.”
Bova had been diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, his mother said.
The often-deadly infection spreads quickly, killing the body’s soft tissue. Symptoms include warm skin with red or purplish areas of painful swelling, including beyond the affected area, followed by fever, fatigue and vomiting.
Even with treatment, up to 1 in 3 people with necrotizing fasciitis die from the infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 700 to 1,100 cases are recorded in the United States each year.
“Accurate diagnosis, rapid antibiotic treatment, and prompt surgery are important to stopping this infection,” the CDC says.
Mc Intyre, 67 of El Cajon, California, said her son was not one who frequented doctors.
Bova, of San Diego, tried to out-tough the infection he contracted in the mountains of Julian in San Diego County.
“He developed these really nasty blisters and he said that it felt … when his arm was oozing that it was acid coming down his arm,” she said.
Bova, who was treating the infection with antibiotic cream and moisture, eventually succumbed to the pain and went to a hospital but died two days later, Mc Intyre said.
NBC News has not confirmed the flesh-eating bacteria as the official cause of death.
Dr. Shweta Warner, who specializes in infectious diseases, told NBC San Diego that necrotizing fasciitis isn’t contagious, but it’s rare and serious.
“It enters your body through your broken skin barrier, and it quickly reproduces in your tissue, moving through the tissues very rapidly and giving off toxins,” Warner said.
Streptococcus A, a bacteria that causes necrotizing fasciitis, is often found in warm, brackish water, Warner said. It’s especially dangerous for people with weaker immune systems.
In a 2019 report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers concluded climate change may have brought flesh-eating bacteria to previously unaffected waters.
In June 2019, Carolyn Fleming, of Ellenton, Florida, died of necrotizing fasciitis after cutting her leg in the waters off Anna Maria Island in Florida, her family said.
Mc Intyre said the rare condition needs to be publicized in order to save lives.
She described her son as compassionate, selfless and a dog lover. He was also engaged to be married, Mc Intyre said.
Mc Intyre said she and her son spoke every day and he was a handyman who was building her a wooden stove for her patio.
“He was just within a couple of days of finishing it,” she said. “Right before he passed, he told me he still had a job to finish for me.”
Madelyn Urabe and Janelle Griffith contributed.
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