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United States[edit]
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the protist killed 33 people between 1998 and 2007. In the ten years from 2001 to 2010, 32 infections were reported in the U.S. Of those cases, 30 people were infected by contaminated recreational water and two people were infected by water from a geothermal (naturally hot) drinking water supply.[36] Most cases over the years have been in the Southeast U.S.[37] In 2011, there were two unusual cases in which Louisiana residents died after becoming infected by using neti pots with contaminated unchlorinated household tap water, the first U.S. cases of PAM linked to N. fowleri in household plumbing served by municipal water.[38] Two years later, the St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana water system was found to contain N. fowleri after a 4-year-old died of the infection.[39] In 2013, a girl in Arkansas became the third known person in the last 50 years to survive the parasite after her doctors gave her an experimental drug, Miltefosine,[40] in addition to the standard treatment.[41] During an exceptionally warm August in 2010, a seven-year-old contracted PAM in Minnesota, USA, about 550 miles farther north than the previously known range of N. fowleri infections. This case supports the view that N.fowleri is increasing its range as temperatures rise.[42]
