KARACHI: The city’s health authorities on Thursday confirmed another death from brain-eating amoeba, or Naegleria fowleri, but the fact that the second victim too belonged to the same locality worried them the most, raising questions whether the water supply utility was adequately chlorinating the water being supplied to the area.

Health officials identified the latest victim of naegleria as 22-year-old Abdul Basit who lived in Sunny Heights in Gulistan-i-Jauhar near Rashid Minhas Road.

The patient was admitted to a private hospital on Monday in a ‘highly critical’ condition and was put on a ventilator before being moved into the intensive care unit where he died on Tuesday. The authorities confirmed the death on Thursday.

“The victim died after enduring the deadly disease for a day in a private hospital,” said Dr Zafar Ijaz, executive district officer of health while speaking to Dawn.

The officials said the victim’s family took the body for burial to Tando Allahyar to which they originally belonged. Like the 39-year-old man of the same vicinity who died two weeks ago, Basit too had no history of swimming, they said.

They said they had taken samples of water from the victim’s house and the vicinity to investigate whether the deaths were caused by improperly chlorinated water.

Karachi Commissioner Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui said the authorities were aware of the gravity of the situation and were taking all necessary measures against the disease in the light of the directives given by the chief minister.

Last year, the disease claimed three lives – a 14-year-old boy from Korangi, a 20-year-old man from New Karachi’s Godhra Colony and a 40-year-old man from Lines Area. The disease resurfaced in the city with more virulence in 2012 when it claimed 10 lives.

They said the provincial health minister had already formed a committee to collect samples of water to ensure proper chlorination across the city. The committee included representatives of the provincial government, the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board.

“We are checking the samples taken from various parts of the city and employing different measures to combat the disease,” said an official, adding the two deaths in the same vicinity warranted special attention and threadbare investigation.

The officials said they had formed a subcommittee as well with the mandate to survey swimming pools and water parks to check if they were properly chlorinated.

PAM (primary amoebic meningoencephalitis) is defined in medical literature as a rare but typically fatal infection caused by Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba found in rivers, lakes, springs, drinking water networks and poorly chlorinated swimming pools.

According to a research, only three cases have been reported so far in the medical literature of the world where patients suffering from this infection survived.

Swimming in inadequately chlorinated public pools was so far believed to be the only cause of contracting the dreaded amoeba infection. The germs travel through the nasal cavity and only affect the brain. The illness attacks a healthy person three to seven days after exposure to contaminated water with symptoms of headache and slight fever, in some cases associated with sore throat and rhinitis.

Senior physicians are still clueless about how the lethal amoeba spread and health experts suggest that physicians and clinicians should go beyond the book and international researches and deduce an indigenous opinion on the issue.

The ages of the Naegleria victims so far ranged from about four years to 49 years.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2014