In a rare event, Arkansas toddler dies after contracting brain-eating amoeba and to which she was exposed when she swam in a pool.

The little boy became infected with Naegleria fowleri, a water-dwelling amoeba that causes inflammation in the brain, destroying it and killing nearly 100 percent of its victims.

The Arkansas Department of Health has confirmed through laboratory testing that the pool where the young boy and probably many other children played, contained traces of amoeba. Authorities immediately closed the pool.

According to the DailyMail, this is the latest victim of this particular infection of the five that have been reported, with the last before the boy a Texas resident who died after swimming in a lake in Austin.

Naegleria fowleri is a single-celled microorganism that lives in warm fresh water, such as that which flows from fountains.

When the parasite enters the nose and travels through the nasal passages to the brain where it feeds on brain tissue, leading the patient to severe neurological damage. The infection is called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM).

It is not clear how much time passed between Michael’s exposure and the infection but typically the process progresses quickly.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, symptoms appear between the first and 12th day after swimming in contaminated water, and death usually follows about five days later.

The symptoms at the beginning resemble a virus, such as headache, nausea, fever and stiff neck. But they quickly progress to more serious neurological problems, such as seizures, hallucinations, coma and often death.

Just 157 cases of infection have been confirmed from 1962 to 2022, but only four people survived.