Sometimes the brain is also affected by the bacterium, but the damage there is not permanent. This is a now rare strep-induced childhood disease characterized by a high fever and distinctive rash. To prevent strep throat, wash your hands frequently and avoid close contact with people who have it. When the necrotizing process has advanced, the living bacteria are safe from treatment because they are in the killed flesh, which has been abandoned by the bloodstream, which might carry antibiotics. Meanwhile the bacteria continue to produce the toxin, which seeps from the dead flesh into the living, where it kills adjacent cells.
Physicians have no recourse except surgery to remove all the dead flesh and with it the infection.
Failure to take this drastic measure can lead to death. The infection proceeds very fast, so it is important that any hint of a rampant infection, especially combined with high fever , be treated with powerful antibiotics while the bacteria are still in the living part of the flesh. The destructive strains of strep A were at a high level in the 1940s, but incidence fell until about 1980. Since then the number of cases of necrotizing strep have been rising.