"Brain-eating amoeba’ claims second victim this month

Yahoo ^

[nuconvert]

A parasite known as the "brain-eating amoeba" has claimed its second young American victim this month.

Christian Strickland, a 9-year-old from Henrico County in Virginia contracted an infection after visiting a fishing camp in his state. He died of meningitis on August 5.

This week, health department officials confirmed that the deadly amoeba--officially known as "Naegleria fowleri"--was to blame.

"Sadly, we have had a Naegleria infection in Virginia this summer," Dr. Keri Hall of the Virginia Department of Health, told The Richmond Times-Dispatch. "It's important that people be aware of . . . safe swimming messages."

Earlier this month, Courtney Nash succumbed to the brain-eating amoeba after diving off a dock into the St. John's River at her grandmother's house in Florida.

[Jewbacca]

This is how all the good zombie movies start.

[RatSlayer]

For anyone that finds this topic fascinating, I’d suggest subscribing to the This Week in Parasitism podcast:

http://www.microbeworld.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=99&Itemid=259

All the terminology used to describe parasites is fairly common (unlike virus terminology) so these parasite podcasts are pretty easy to understand even for laymen.

[gleeaikin]

When I was 14 and going to swim off a ferry pier in Lake Champlain, some idiot was trying to convince a 15 year old boy that all he had to do was jump in and nature would teach him how. A few minutes later I was swimming and the boy came hurtling past me into the 20 ft deep water. I thought, “Oh, how stupid.” Then I saw bubbles and finally the top of his head at the surface, then down again, more bubbles and the top of his head which again went down. The third time his head surfaced I swam over and tried to grab him. He wrapped arms and legs around me as I screamed and we both went down. Although I had lost a lot of my air, I just relaxed and sank while he climbed up me to my shoulders, whereupon I slipped behind him and came to the surface. We were about 8 feet from the ladder. I was a good swimmer, but had not had life saving lessons. I grabbed the back of his shirt and started pushing him toward the 10 foot ladder. The minute he touched it he was up like a terrified squirrel. I climbed out and there was the idiot who almost killed us both. He said, “You ought to hug that girl and give her a big kiss, she saved your life.” The boy and I just looked at each other and shook our heads in disbelief. Some people are too stupid to waste words on.

At any rate I had learned basic water comfort at the NJ beaches as a child, and had formal swimming lessons at ages 10 and 11 at summer camp (in a Massachusetts lake with an occasional leach). I urge everyone to learn basic water skills and floating, and swimming too, and be sure your children learn.

Here is a link giving details about this dangereous microorganism Naegleria fowleri.

http://www.medicinenet.com/naegleria_infection/article.htm

[Fantasywriter]

Wow—what a story! You wrote it very well.

[triumphant values]

You’d be surprised (maybe not) at how many of holders’ people don’t know how to swim. I’ve spent time over several summers teaching kids something we used to take for granted.

Guys I know on the Chicago Fire Dept. have a quite insensitive term for them - "rockfish".

[Joe Boucher]

For quite some time there were many blacks who believed the C.I.A. originally invented AIDs to decimate the black community.