KARACHI: The health authorities in the city are investigating at least one more death believed to be caused by the deadly ‘brain-eating amoeba’, or naegleria fowleri, that has already claimed four lives in Karachi and another in Hyderabad, officials said on Sunday.

“We have got reports of a death in Karachi, which we suspect is caused by the deadly naegleria,” said an official in the provincial health department wishing not to be named.

“The victim died reportedly because of meningitis, but all symptoms regarding his death give strong indications that he died because of naegleria,” the official added.

He said a formal investigation into the case had already been launched.

The provincial health department had already passed instructions to its facilities across the province to examine all deaths, which they concluded as caused by meningitis, for naegleria because both diseases had mostly similar symptoms except that naegleria gave no second chance to its victim.

Officials said there could be some more such cases which might have been bracketed with meningitis.

“Our effort is to know the exact level of threat through such realistic measures,” said Dr Zafar Ijaz, who heads the city’s healthcare system.

Similarly, sources said, the provincial health department was planning to establish a system to document the disease on scientific grounds.

The fact that a victim belonged to Hyderabad — the first one reported outside Karachi since the disease was first reported in 2012 — has already alarmed the senior authorities, mainly for the fact that the chlorination levels are immensely unsatisfactory in the rest of Sindh than Karachi.

The situation is not very ideal in the city as well as fresh examinations of water samples from various parts of Karachi show more than 40 per cent of water supplied in the metropolis has insufficient quantity of chlorine.

Out of now a total of five naegleria deaths, four have been reported in Karachi with two in Gulistan-i-Jauhar. The first death was reported on May 27.

All the five victims of the disease have no history of swimming, said officials.

Swimming is considered to be one of the key factors that cause the primary amoebic meningoencephalitis.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2014