Flesh-Eating Bacteria Kill New Mother

State health investigators are headed to a Rochester hospital to probe the death of a woman who died of a flesh-eating bacteria infection a month after giving birth.

The unidentified woman, who died Friday, had been ill since giving birth to a healthy child by Caesarean section at Strong Memorial Hospital.

Authorities did not release the cause of her death, but the woman’s relatives told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle she died of necrotizing fasciitis, the so-called flesh-eating disease caused by a strain of Group A streptococcus.

The flesh-eating disease, which killed 11 people in England in a 1994 outbreak, responds to antibiotics if treated quickly but is fatal in about 30 percent of cases.