Arkansas girl survives brain-eating amoeba

Last July, while swimming in a pond at Willow Springs Water Park near Little Rock, Ark., then 12-year-old Kali Hardig was the unknowing target of a brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri.

After becoming ill and contracting an escalating fever, she was rushed to Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Flushed through her nose in the warm-water pond, the amoeba took the sinus-cavity highway up the olfactory nerve to her brain. Doctors said she had a 99 percent chance of dying, according to BuzzFeed.

But, with medical attention and luck, Kali survived. This year, already two children have died from the invisible amoeba. The two previous cases at Arkansas Children’s Hospitals had resulted in deaths. Kali was the third known survivor out of 132 confirmed cases in the U.S. since the 60s.

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