Whitewater center suspends activities after amoeba detected

“We were having discussions about what the next steps should be, and at that point we decided we should talk to the whitewater center”, Mecklenburg County Health Director Marcus Plescia said at a news conference.

A person will not become ill from drinking contaminated water, but when water with Naegleria fowleri enters the body through the nose and travels to the brain, the effect is nearly always deadly. The organism is ubiquitous.

The Whitewater Center and health officials from the state and county will be meeting over the next few days to see if anything can be done to lower the concentrations of the microorganism.

“We will deeply miss her, but we were so blessed by her presence and her gifts that she just shared in a handsome way”, Wilson said.

The decision comes after test results showed the presence of the Naegleria fowleri amoeba in the water, according to a letter from the Mecklenburg County Manager.

Plescia stressed how rare it is to contract an amoeba.

The whitewater center said it disinfects its water with an ultraviolet radiation.

County Commissioner Pat Cotham says she’s been fielding calls from concerned parents all week.

Health officials will ask the center’s CEO, Jeffrey Wise, to voluntarily close the facility, Diorio wrote. Seitz was in a raft with several others that overturned June 8 at the whitewater center, health officials said.

Infections from N. fowleri are extremely rare. “We need to weigh this particular threat against what people might see in the real world if you go to a river or a lake or even some swimming pools”.

While the amoeba is common, the infection that the teen girl from OH died from is very rare – only 35 cases have been detected in the past ten years.

The 18-year-old OH woman died of primary amebic mengioencephalitis on Sunday, a rare but fatal brain infection caused by the amoeba Naegleria fowleri, said Mitzi Kline, director of communication for Franklin County Public Health. This is the same day NCDHHS says the victim died.

The Charlotte Observer reported that the girl, Lauren Seitz, of Westerville, Ohio, has lost her life from a suspected case of primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), and an investigation is on into the case to determine if she contracted the infection at the time of whitewater rafting in Charlotte while on a church trip. They sang at nursing homes and churches along the way.