10-Year-Old Girl Battles For Life After She Contracts Brain-Eating Amoeba While Swimming

During her swimming session over the weekend, a 10-year-old girl contracted a brain-eating amoeba which left her fighting for her life.

The girl, identified as Lily Mae Avant was swimming in the Brazos River and Lake Whitney in Bosque Country near Waco over Labor Day weekend when the incident took place, reported CNN affiliate KWTX-TV.

Upon being affected by the amoeba, Lily started manifesting signs of extreme illness on Sept. 8, 2019. According to a Facebook Page created to support the girl, "Lily began having a headache, and it was quickly followed by a fever," Although it looked like a viral infection to her family at a glance, the family doctor sensed something gravely amiss when they visited them after Lily had trouble sleeping.

The family wrote on Lily’s Facebook Page, "She was incoherent, unresponsive and was quickly swept up and taken to the ER."

When the doctors performed a spinal tap on Lily after she was flown to Cook Children’s Health Care Systems in Forth Worth, they found that she had contacted Naegleria fowleri, a menacing bacteria which has 97% mortality rate.

The girl’s aunt, Crystal Warren, told KWTX, "It's every parent's worst nightmare," She also added, "For this to happen to her when there were so many other people in the same waters on the same days we just don't understand why it was her."

Chris Dowdy, principal at Valley Mills Elementary School, revealed to CNN that Lily Mae, a 5^th grader was "putting up a fierce battle for her life, caused by this awful amoeba." According to him, "She is an outstanding student, but more importantly, she is just a tremendous person," Dowdy said. "Everyone in our community, state, and even the entire country is praying for this sweet child."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention elucidated that this life-threatening amoeba is a single-cell living organism which is predominantly found in warm freshwaters like lakes and rivers. The amoeba enters the body through the nose, travels to the brain and subsequently ruins brain tissues, according to the CDC.

The CDC declared that between 2009 and 2018, only 34 cases of the Naegleria fowleri infection were reported in the U.S. They also said that only four people survived out of the 145 reported cases so far between 1962 and 2018.

An optimistic Warren told KWTX she is beholden to the survival of her niece making it the fifth survival case in history.