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Brain-Eating Amoeba Kills Boy

Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.
Fort Myers News-Press
/
The Florida Channel
Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.

The family of Zachary Reyna, a LaBelle boy who fought a brain-eating infection for 20 days,  says the 12-year-old is now on a ventilator at Miami Children’s Hospital so his organs can be donated, the Fort Myers News-Press reports. Although antibiotics helped clear up the primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, he suffered too much brain damage to recover, his family says. The extremely rare infection is almost always fatal.  

Originally founded in December 2006 as an independent grassroots publication dedicated to coverage of health issues in Florida, Health News Florida was acquired by WUSF Public Media in September 2012.