For a rush order, a drug courier drove a drug that once saved the life of a girl with a brain-eating amoeba infection from Orlando, Fla., to Medical University of South Carolina Health in Charleston to treat another patient with the same infection, according to CBS News.
The drug, miltefosine, is made by Profounda and just one round of treatment can cost $48,000. Originally, the drug was only available directly from the CDC to treat brain-eating amoeba infections. However, miltefosine (brand name Impavido), became available for order from Profounda this year. Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, became the first hospital to have the drug on hand in June this year.
MUSC has the drug on consignment, according to a Live 5 News report, meaning the hospital won't be charged for the dug unless it's used.
The so-called brain-eating amoeba is known as Naegleria fowleri and lives in warm freshwater. It can cause primary amebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM. PAM is almost always fatal — just three of the 133 people in the U.S. who contracted PAM from 1962 to 2014 survived.
Two of those survivors received miltefosine as part of the treatment, according to the CDC.