Billboard Warns About Brain-Eating Amoeba After Florida Family Loses Son

Family wants parents to be aware of summer dangers.

ByABC News
June 29, 2016, 1:37 PM

— -- A Florida family has posted a billboard to draw attention to the dangers of the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri for people swimming in local lakes, ponds and streams.

Sandra and Timothy Gompf posted a billboard in Tampa in honor of their son Philip, who died from meningitis caused by Naegleria fowleri in 2009. It's part of a campaign on water safety that the family started in 2014.

"We can't bring back our child. Protect yours, with nose clips," the billboard reads next to a family picture with Philip missing.

Sandra Gompf says in a video linked to the family's website that he contracted the infection after he went swimming in a lake. His first symptom was a headache that appeared five days later. The morning after that, they had difficulty waking him up.

They rushed him to the pediatric ER.

"He was found pretty quickly to have severe meningitis, and three days later, he was gone," Gompf says in the video.

Both of Philip's parents are doctors who specialize in serious infections. They put up the billboard and started an online campaign to draw attention to the issue and help protect other children.

"It's 99 percent fatal, but it's 100 percent preventable," Gompf says in the video. "You just need to keep water out of the nose."

There are up to eight infections in the U.S. from Naegleria fowleri each year, and nearly all are fatal, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advises people to take steps to avoid getting water up their nose in freshwater lakes and streams. Swimmers can keep their head above water, use a nose clip or hold their nose shut underwater.

"If I could tell you one thing that Philip would want you to know, it would be to enjoy nature but to remember that natural bodies of water are alive," she says in the video.