Student may lose fingers as well as leg to flesh-eating infection

A college student who has already lost a leg to a rare, flesh-eating bacterial infection is now expected to suffer the loss of her fingers too, her father said.

Aimee Copeland, 24, was kayaking and zip-lining along the Little Tallapoosa River near Carrollton, Georgia, on May 1 when the line broke and she cut her calf.

Emergency room doctors closed the wound with 22 staples and released Copeland, a graduate student at West Georgia University. But after her conditioned worsened, Ms Copeland was diagnosed with necrotising fasciitis, a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection.