Please email us with any other event information you may know about or if you pick up any errors. This is the advice of an eye specialist. The Acantha amoeba is a single cell organism which, when it gets behind a contact lens, is pressed into the cornea where it takes a firm hold. The cornea is destroyed within weeks and a cornea transplant is eventually the only option of saving the patient from blindness. The occurrence of the disease is quite rare.
Statistics show that about one in ten thousand people who wear contact lenses become infected.
A major cause for this serious disease are people who make up their own solutions for contact lenses, often unknowingly using contaminated water. However, several cases of Open Water Swimmers, and canoeists, are known. For your own safety, have your swimming goggles fitted with lenses. The open water event was to be held outside Melbourne on the 21st and 22nd of August. We left South Africa on the 13th of August and flew to Perth and caught a connecting flight to Melbourne.