The death of a young man caused by waterborne Naegleria meningitis has heightened concerns about the quality of water people consume in the city.A staffer at the infection control section of the Liaquat National Hospital on Wednesday said that a 24-year-old man brought to the LNH with complaints of high-grade fever, headache, vomiting and drowsiness had died of Naegleria fowleri on Tuesday.
Despite efforts by senior physicians, the patient died after two days of his admission to the hospital, the said, adding that he had learnt that the Naegleria causing primary amoebic meningitis (PAM) in humans was a disease which had a fatality rate of over 99 per cent.
Since May, seven people, manly young men, have died of Naegleria fowleri or PAM in the city.
According to experts, the organism was discovered in Australia in the middle of the 1960s, but probably has been infecting humans for centuries and is now being termed 'brain-eating amoeba'.
Dr Afia Zafar of the Aga Khan University Hospital said Naegleria was commonly found in warm fresh water. Only one species, naegleria fowleri, infected people when water containing the amoeba entered the body through the nose and travelled up to the brain, where it destroyed brain tissues.