Two-year-old killed by 'brain-eating amoeba' in US after going swimming

The parasitic infection in question has a 97% mortality rate.

A routine playful dip in the water for a two-year-old boy in the United States turned into a nightmare for the family after the former succumbed to an infection caused by a rare brain-eating amoeba.

According to a report by the New York Post, Woodrow Bundy, a two-year-old from Nevada, succumbed to the infection on July 19, after battling for his life for a week.

Social media posts by the Bundy family indicate that they became aware that something was wrong with Woodrow when they started observing “flu-like symptoms” last week.

Suspecting meningitis, the family rushed Woodrow to the hospital, only to realise that he had been infected by naegleria fowleri, a deadly brain-eating amoeba that sparked panic across the US last year.

A parasite found across the world, naegleria fowleri resides in warm freshwater bodies like lakes, but cannot survive saltwater environments.

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While not contagious, the parasite infiltrates swimmers’ bodies via their noses and colonises their brains, infecting them with primary amebic meningoencephalitis that causes destruction of brain tissue and swelling of the brain.

Further, the parasitic infection has a 97 per cent mortality rate—of the 157 known cases in the US between 1962 and 2022, there have been only four survivors.

Given this fact, Woodrow’s chances of survival were already slim when his prognosis came in. His family further said on social media that the CDC had refused to administer medication to Woodrow as he was “past the point of any survivor.”

Woodrow finally breathed his last on July 19, a week after getting infected.

“Woodrow Turner Bundy returned victoriously to our father in heaven at 2:56 am. He is my hero and I will forever be grateful to God for giving me the goodest baby boy on earth, and I am grateful to know I will have that boy in heaven someday,” Woodrow’s mother Briana wrote on Facebook a couple of days back, announcing the toddler’s death.

Notably, this isn’t the only amoeba-related death to have taken place in the US in recent times.

Last August, another child had died from a naegleria fowleri infection in Nebraska, and scientists reportedly fear that rising temperatures due to climate change are creating ideal conditions for such amoeba to multiply and thrive in water bodies in the US.