WANCHESE, N.C. (WRAL) – A man has spent more than a week in a hospital on North Carolina’s Outer Banks after a small cut on his leg led to a dangerous infection.

He came into contact with Vibrio Vulnificus, a flesh-eating bacteria that can become deadly in less than 48 hours.

The Centers for Disease Control say it can kill one in five patients, sometimes very quickly.

The man’s fellow shrimper and close friend said he seems to be getting better, but the situation is still scary.

“There have been people here that died from that. They were a little bit older. It’s a bacteria in warm, brackish water. It’s bad, it makes you think. You got a cut on your hand, you’ve got to be careful,” Marc Mitchem, the patient’s friend, said.

Mitchem now wears gloves and sanitizes often to keep the bacter

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