Yahoo News Pop Idol Darius almost died after drinking from Thames
Pop Idol star Darius Campbell has revealed that he was close to death after drinking dirty water from the River Thames.
The singer, who came third in the first series of the talent show, was filming an advert for his water charity Fresh2O Water, showcasing a filter that is meant to remove 99.9% of "water-borne pathogens, bacteria and viruses".
However, he then drank the water from the river out of what he thought was a filtered bottle, which turned out to be a prototype.
"In order to raise funds to get the water filters to Africa, we did a demonstration video down at the Thames next to a sewage outlet," Darius explained (via The Sun).
"So I drank the water for the video and raised the funds but when I went to Glasgow to see my mum for her birthday I collapsed. It turned out I had a cerebral oedema where your brain swells bigger than your skull.
"My dad saved my life. He got me to hospital, they diagnosed it quickly. I had bacterial meningitis. I had picked up an inflammatory virus from the Thames that had stayed in my system.
"It knocked my white blood cell count out for months and had left my immunity low so that I could have picked up anything going around. I had been flying a lot and picked up bacterial meningitis which at that time was on the rise."
Darius also revealed that it happened when his mother was battling cancer and undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy in 2015, adding: "As I came out of the coma I remember my mum sitting beside the bed.
"It felt upside down and wrong because mum was going through cancer treatment. Yet she was sat next to me with tears in her eyes telling my brother that they almost lost me."
He also expressed concern that the filters would not work for other people after his experience.
"But other people who drank the water didn't get sick and it was a huge relief when we found out that the water filter I used was a display model without a filter," Darius said.
"So, in an inadvertent way, I proved the water filter worked because the others who drank from a bottle with a filter in it didn't get sick. That was the silver lining."
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