Girl, 12, contracts brain-eating parasite after swimming in lake
An American girl is in critical condition in an Arkansas hospital after contracting a brain-eating parasite while swimming in a lake.
Twelve-year-old Kali Hardig was swimming in a sandy-bottom lake at Willow Springs Water Park in Little Rock, Arkansas, when she reportedly ingested contaminated lake water through her nose.
A day after swimming in the lake, Hardig fell ill.
"I couldn't get her fever down. She started vomiting. She'd say her head hurt really bad. She cried, and she would just look at me and her eyes would just kind of roll", Kali's mother Traci Hardig told Christian Post.
Hardig rushed her daughter to the local hospital where doctors diagnosed Kali with the rare and potentially fatal form of meningitis, called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis and caused by the amoeba Naegleria fowleri.
Kali was placed in an induced coma in order to stabilise her condition.
"They call her stable for the moment, just got to ride out all the inflammation, all the side effects that the meningitis caused," she said.
The 85-year-old water park where Hardig allegedly contracted the parasite has since been shut.
“Though the odds of contracting Naegleria are extremely low, they are just not good enough to allow our friends or family to swim,” park owners David and Lou Ann Ratliff said in a statement.
It is believed Naegleria thrives in the sediment of freshwater lakes and rivers.
While usually harmless, the parasite can cause fatal swelling of the brain if ingested through the nose.
Naegleria fowleri infections are almost always fatal.
