Brain-Eating Amoeba Results In Hospitalization Of 12-Year-Old After Swimming In Lake At Arkansas Water Park; Parasite Generally Causes Fatal Brain Swelling

A brain-eating amoeba is responsible for the hospitalization of a 12-year-old girl.

The girl is in critical condition at Arkansas Children's Hospital after contracting a deadly brain-eating parasite while swimming in a lake at a water park.

The disease is a rare form of meningitis caused by the amoeba Naegleria fowleri. The disease is called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, and Kali Harding has been hospitalized after swimming at a water park and contracting the brain-eating amoeba. Naegleria, while rare, breeds in warm freshwater and in the sediment of lakes and rivers. Generally, it's harmless-but if it's inhaled through the nose, it can be very dangerous and cause fatal brain swelling.

The sandy-bottom lake at Willow Springs Water Park in Little Rock, Ark. may have held the brain-eating amoeba. It has now been closed.

The park owners said in a statement, "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.

Naegleria fowleri, while rare, it is almost always fatal. One person out of the 128 people infected since 1962 survived. Death usually occurs within five days after symptoms start.

Early symptoms are a severe frontal headache, fever, vomiting, and nausea. As the amoeba makes its way from the nasal cavity into the brain, a stiff neck, seizures, vomiting, and hallucinations can occur.

Willow Springs will not reopen as a sand bottom lake, they said, but are working to "determine the feasibility of installing a solid bottom to the lake."

"We will not ever reopen as a sand bottom lake," they said in a statement.

The Arkansas Department of Health said in a statement from Dr. Dirk Haselow,

 "If concerned about Naegleria, avoid swimming, diving or other activities that push water up the nose, especially in natural waters when temperatures are high and water levels are low," Dr. Dirk Haselow of the Arkansas Department of Health said in a statement.

Naegleria may have killed a child in Minnesota last year. It was responsible for four deaths in 2011, all of whom had been swimming in freshwater lakes.

Kali Hardig remains in critical condition after contracting the brain-eating parasite.