British tourist will have two fingers amputated after spider bite in Ibiza

Stock image: The promenade by San Antonio in Ibiza
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A British tourist will get two of his fingers amputated after he was bitten by a spider at a beach in Ibiza.

The unnamed 19-year-old will have surgery when he is home in Wales after two weeks of hospital tests in Spain.

Health experts said the teenager was bitten by a poisonous brown recluse spider which are rarely deadly to humans.

The holidaymaker told how he was bitten while sitting on some steps.

Although he “didn’t think anything of it” at the time, he said he later woke up at 5am the following morning because his hand was “burning and was swelling up”.

He told the newspaper Diario de Ibiza: “I began to panic because my hands were turning more and more purple and the doctors told me they had never seen anything like it.”

He added: “Millions of people go to the same place every year to see the sunset and nothing ever happened to them before me.”

Bites from the species are said to be uncommon.

However, bites can cause necrosis which is slow to heal and has the potential to lead to another infection.

Necrosis is the death of body tissue. It occurs when too little blood flows to the tissue.

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