A Chinese man needed to have his left eyeball surgically removed to prevent a bacterial infection from reaching his brain after swatting a drain fly on his face.

Flies can be very annoying during the summer months. They fly around our sweaty bodies, landing on our heads and faces, but while the first instinct is to smack them dead right then and there, doctors advise against it, and for good reason. Flies carry dangerous bacteria and swatting them on our skin leaves us exposed to some very serious consequences. Take this man from Shenzen, China, who recently lost his left eye after swatting a small fly on his face and suffering a bacterial infection that doctors couldn’t treat.

Photo: Frank Collins/Wikimedia Commons

According to the Yangcheng Evening News, the man, surnamed Wu, killed the fly that was buzzing around his head by swatting it against his face. He thought nothing else of it, but only an hour later his left eye became red, swollen, and painful. As his symptoms worsened, the man decided to go to a local hospital where he was diagnosed with seasonal conjunctivitis.

Despite taking the prescribed medication, Wu’s condition deteriorated rapidly in the following days, and by the time he went to the hospital again, he had lost vision in his left eye almost completely, and the area around his left eye had become severely ulcerated. It turned out that the seasonal conjunctivitis was actually a bacterial infection from the swatted drain fly.

Unfortunately for Wu, medication could no longer contain the spread of the infection, and because it risked affecting his brain, doctors decided to surgically remove his left eyeball.

Wu’s tragic story has been promoted as a cautionary tale in mainland China, with doctors warning people against swatting insects on their faces or any areas where they could cause bacterial infections. Instead, experts advise staying calm and using your hands to just shoo the insects away.