<img src="
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A 16-year-old Florida girl died after a rare parasite infected her brain during a swim in a river near her home, doctors said.
Doctors believe Courtney Nash, from Mims, Fla., was struck down by amoebic meningoencephalitis, a deadly infection
caused by an amoeba that lurks in warm river and pond waters.
Nash was rushed to the hospital late last week when she got a fever and became delirious shortly after taking a dip in the St. John's River last week.
She was pronounced dead at around 4:30 p.m., Brevard County Fire Rescue said.
Health officials have not determined a cause of death, but they suspect that Nash may have caught the parasite that
causes the infection, amoebic encephalitis, during her swim.
"We got a result from the hospital in Orlando and they did a spinal tap on her, and they looked on the cerebral spinal fluid
and they saw the amoeba," Barry Inman, an epidemiologist with the Brevard County Health Department, told CBS Tampa.
The dangerous and rare parasite is commonly found in stagnant freshwater during hot weather, as well as poorly tended pools or hot tubs.
The parasite enters the victim through the nose and then attacks the brain and spinal chord, doctors said.
There are typically fewer than five cases a year in the entire country, and only one person has survived the infection since the 1970s, Inman told the station.
"We have like one or two maybe a year. Sometimes we go a few years without having any cases in the United States," he said.
Florida's last confirmed case came in 2009, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
Nash was a rising junior at Astronaut High School in Titusville.
Friends and family members said she loved the outdoors and been swimming in the St. John's all her life.
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