Brain Eating Amoeba Kills A 17-Year-Old After He Splashed Water On His Face At A Durham Community Center
Investigators have traced the death of 17-year-old Moises Ponce Mendoza of Burlington, North Carolina to a decorative outdoor water feature at El Futuro, a bilingual community mental health nonprofit in Durham County. Mendoza splashed water on his face at the feature on August 13.
Symptoms appeared August 21. He was hospitalized August 22 and died August 31.
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services released its investigation findings Tuesday, concluding the El Futuro water feature is the most likely, though not conclusively confirmed, source of his exposure to Naegleria fowleri, the so-called brain-eating amoeba.
CDC laboratory testing subsequently detected the organism's DNA in the feature's storage tank. The feature was closed and drained August 28 and remains closed.
Naegleria fowleri lives naturally in warm freshwater and causes a nearly always fatal infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis when contaminated water enters the nose and travels to the brain.
Only 167 cases have been reported in the US between 1962 and 2024. Only four people have ever survived. Symptoms, severe headache, fever, nausea, progress within days to stiff neck, seizures and coma.
Health officials stress that the amoeba cannot infect through drinking water. The risk is entirely from water entering the nose. Using nose clips in warm freshwater, keeping the head above water and avoiding disturbing sediment in warm, shallow areas significantly reduces risk.
