Affected by an extremely rare bacterial infection, this infant had the skin on his back surgically removed by doctors in southern India's Telangana to save his life.

Identified as the baby of Arshiya and Feroz, a homemaker and fruit seller respectively, the boy was only 10 days old when he experienced his first seizures.

"By the time we got to the hospital, he had 2 seizures, and we noticed there was a small red patch on his back that wasn’t there before. He was immediately hospitalised and they started giving him all kinds of injections," Arshiya says recounting her horror.

Doctors at the Nice Hospital in Hyderabad city diagnosed the two-week-old baby with a severe condition of Necrotising Fasciitis (NF), commonly known as flesh-eating disease.

Arshiya adds, "A few days later, he woke up, but he was burning with fever and the patch just kept growing and growing. Soon it became black and got filled with pus, and then… then the skin started peeling from my baby’s back."

While the condition can be treated with a heavy and strict dosage of antibiotics, the baby needed surgical intervention as the infection spread rapidly.

According to doctors, the baby- who was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 2- suffered from abdomen distension, seizures and rash. He also suffered hyperpigmentation over the abdomen which spread to the chest area. At first, doctors removed dead skins from his back, followed by multiple vacuum dressings.

When the wounds started to heal and tissues became healthy, skin grafting was performed on him.

However, the graft uptake failed and it again got infected and filled with pus.

As the initial plan failed, plastic surgeons at the hospital removed the skin which was not taken up and another set of dressings have been administered under antibiotic cover.

"When my baby came back from the surgery, the skin on nearly half of his back was gone, and we could see the flesh underneath," Arshiya says.

Doctors said the baby will need another two weeks of hospitalisation, which is likely to cost the couple an approximate Rs. 14 lakh (USD 19,650).

To help his parents cover the medical expenses, Milaap, one of India's largest crowdfunding site has set up a page: https://milaap.org/fundraisers/help-babyofarshiyabegum