Kerala’s encounter with a deadly brain infection highlights how climate, culture, and public health can sometimes collide in unexpected ways. A microscopic organism, Naegleria fowleri, thrives in warm, untreated freshwater and can invade the human brain through the nose. What follows is a near-fatal condition called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, which destroys brain tissue within days.

Globally, only a few hundred cases have been documented over decades, but the mortality rate exceeds 90 per cent. In Kerala, this once-rare threat is now a seasonal danger. The southern state has detected dozens of cases in a single year ~ an extraordinary jump from the handful reported earlier. Yet amid the alarm lies a measure of hope: survival rates are improving. State laboratories, strengthened by years of investment in public health, are rapidly testing suspected patients and enabling early treatment.

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Aggressive drug regimens, though far from perfect, are........

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