Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash

This gruesome image shows how a man in Singapore has had his index finger amputated after pricking it whilst shelling raw prawns he bought from a wet market and suffering a flesh-eating infection.

The man, who goes by Jason Lee on Facebook, says he was pricked by a raw prawn which he was shelling after buying it from an unnamed wet market in the city-state of Singapore.

He said he had been pricked by prawn shells many times before and thought this would be no different.

However, he wrote on Facebook that after a day his finger turned black and he was “running a mild fever” so he went to a clinic who warned him to go to A&E immediately.

He says he underwent surgery to remove part of the infected finger that same day and spent a total of seven days in hospital, two of which were in the intensive care unit because of a “flesh-eating” infection.

Lee says doctors told him he could have lost his arm if he had waited another day before seeing a medic.

Local media outlet World of Buzz said the bacteria which caused the infection could be Vibrio vulnificus, which can cause infections both through open wounds and through eating raw or undercooked seafood.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state on their website that infections can happen when “a wound comes into contact with raw or undercooked seafood, its juices, or its drippings or with saltwater or brackish water.”

Symptoms of a bloodstream infection include “fever, chills, dangerously low blood pressure, and blistering skin lesions” whilst wound infections can see swelling, pain, discolouration and discharge.

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