Boy dies from rare ‘brain-eating’ amoeba
A boy in Arlington, Texas, has died from a rare and deadly brain infection he likely contracted from a city splash pad, health officials say.
The boy, whose name and age were not released, was hospitalized at Cook Children’s Medical Center where he was diagnosed with primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a devastating brain infection caused by a single-celled organism called Naegleria fowleri, according to a statement from the City of Arlington Office of Communication.
- fowleri are typically found in bodies of warm fresh water, such as lakes, rivers and hot springs, Live Science previously reported. But in the boy’s case, officials determined that the only possible sources for his exposure to the amoeba were either water from his home or water from a splash pad at Don Misenhimer Park in Arlington, the statement said.
Infections caused by N. fowleri are extremely rare but when infections occur, they are almost always fatal, with less than a 3% survival rate.
The vast majority of people are infected while swimming in warm freshwater lakes and rivers.
There is no routine or rapid test to identify whether N. fowleri is present in water, according to the CDC. But city water systems are treated with chlorine, which kills N. fowleri when chlorine levels are above 0.5 milligrams per liter, according to a 2015 paper on a case of N. fowleri linked to tap water published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. But if water systems aren’t properly maintained, and chlorine levels drop, the organisms may start to grow inside the system, the paper said.
This appears to be what happened at the Arlington splash pad. Records show that employees at Don Misenhimer Park did not consistently document or conduct daily water-quality testing on the splash pad, including checking the levels of chlorine, which is required prior to opening the facility each day, the statement said. What’s more, when employees did document chlorine levels that were low, they did not always record what actions were taken to bring the chlorine levels back up, the statement said. Chlorine readings were not documented on two of the three days that the boy visited the splash pad in late August and early September, and chlorine levels were documented as low one day after the boy visited the park, the statement said.
“We have identified gaps in our daily inspection program,” Lemuel Randolph, Arlington’s deputy city manager, said in the statement.
“Those gaps resulted in us not meeting our maintenance standards at our splash pads.”
The city closed all of its splash pads and they will remain closed for the rest of the year, the statement said.
The drinking water supply for the city of Arlington is not affected, officials said.
The park’s splash pad has a “backflow prevention device” that isolates the facility’s water system from the city’s water distribution system, the statement said.
