Teen survives rare amoeba infection that kills most people

“And within hours, he spoke”, Liriano recalled, choking up and struggling to maintain his composure during a Tuesday morning news conference. Their son Sebastian has survived a brain-eating amoe.

Doctors at Orlando’s Florida Hospital for Children realized Deleon had been infected with a brain-eating amoeba.

A Florida teen has become only the fourth person in the last 50 years to survive an infection from “naegleria fowleri” – also commonly known as the “brain-eating amoeba”.

DeLeon was taken to Florida Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida, with a severe headache on August 8.

The rare amoeba is so deadly that it has a 97 percent death rate.

DeLeon will need rehab, but is ready to return home to South Florida with his family.

He was vacationing in Orlando at a theme park with his family when he developed a severe and very painful headache. His parents took him to the emergency room at Florida Hospital nearly a day and a half later when his headache worsened. However, a spinal tab concluded it was an amoeba.

Doctors took quick action to save DeLeon, lowering the teen’s body temperature and putting him in an induced coma.

Profounda’s pill, Impevido, is recommended by the CDC, but it is not readily available in hospitals.

“When the family came to me, I had to tell them to say their goodbyes”, said Dr. Humberto Liriano, who choked up as he described the case. “I had to tell them, “tell him everything you want to tell your child because I don’t know from the time I put him to sleep to the time I take the tube out will he wake up”, said Liriano.

Luck was also on his side since the drug’s manufacturer is based in Orlando, and a shipment got to the hospital quickly. It can cause a fatal infection when it travels up the nasal passage to the brain. Within 12 minutes, the drug was delivered to the hospital.

There have been 138 cases in the United States between 1962 and 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Physicians started DeLeon on a cocktail of 7 drugs including Impavido, a drug manufactured in Germany that local pharmaceutical company Prounda immediately drove to the hospital to help in the treatment.

In 2014, an 11-year-old Sanford boy died from the amoeba infection, and in 2007, three Central Florida boys died from it. “We literally had to look at this and study for it awhile”, Florida Hospital lab technician Sheila Black said. “He’s a very energetic, adventurous, wonderful teen”, said Brunilda Gonzalez, DeLeon’s mother.