A girl in South Carolina died after contracting a brain-eating amoeba.
Eleven-year-old Hannah Katherine Collins, who was chosen as the Young Miss at Walterboro's annual Miss Rice Festival in April this year, was believed to have been infected with the naegleria fowleri amoeba while she was swimming in the Edisto River near Charleston on July 24.
Collins was given treatment but it was revealed on Thursday, Aug. 4, that she had suffered irreparable brain damage. The drug administered to her was not given early enough to avoid the fatal consequences of the infection. She passed away at the Medical University of South Carolina on Friday night.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed earlier of a patient in South Carolina who has contracted naegleria fowleri but federal privacy laws prevented health authorities and the hospital to provide more information about the patient.
The girl's family has already set up a GoFundMe page to help them with the funeral expenses as well as to raise awareness about the deadly amoeba.
"My beautiful angel Hannah. I feel her with me as I try to go through my day. I pray she gives me the strength to conquer the hard days ahead of me. My baby girl will always be with me and I will try to find comfort in the fact I will one day be united with her in her new home, Heaven," Collins' mother wrote on Facebook.
State epidemiologist Linda Bell said that the naegleria fowleri occurs naturally and can be found in many warm bodies of water such as rivers, lakes and streams but infection rarely occurs. The amoeba is not present in salt water like the ocean and infection rarely happens with swimming pools that do not have adequate levels of chlorine. Infection often requires very specific circumstances.
"Very rarely, infections have been reported when people submerge their heads, cleanse their noses during religious practices, or irrigate their sinuses (nose) using contaminated tap or faucet water," the CDC said. "You can only be infected when contaminated water goes up into your nose."
Over the past 10 years, the United States has only seen fewer than 40 cases of the infection. Bell said that infection is very difficult to contract as exposure often results in the amoeba dying before it can cause infection. Nonetheless, she advised avoiding water-related activities in warm and poorly treated water.
