A 9-year-old child was hospitalized in serious condition with inflammation of the brain in the intensive care unit at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, the Health Ministry said Sunday, after being infected with a very rare “brain-eating” amoeba, apparently while swimming in the Sea of Galilee.

Tests sent to the ministry’s laboratory overnight confirmed that the boy contracted an encephalitis infection from Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba that can be fatal.

He was identified in Hebrew media as Baruch Neriya from Pardes Hannah. His family asked that people pray for the recovery of their son. The ministry said he is sedated and intubated at the hospital.

An initial epidemiological investigation revealed that the child swam at Kursi Beach on the Sea of Galilee about a week before he was hospitalized.

Dr. Danny Eytan, director of the paediatric critical care unit at Rambam, told media the boy had arrived the day before.

During tests, “a suspicion arose that it was an amoeba infection,” he said

Eitan said that though the boy is in “very serious condition,” “we hope for the best.”

“We are exposed to this amoeba, and in most cases we don’t even know it,” Rotem Lapidot, director of the infectious diseases department at Rambam, told the Ynet news outlet. “In very rare cases it manages to enter the brain and cause a serious infection.”

Lapidot said symptoms begin with a high temperature, headaches,........

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