Rare Rabies Death in the States, Bats to Blame

A rare rabies fatality involving a bat prompted U.S. health officials on Thursday to urge Americans to avoid direct contact with the winged mammals and seek prompt medical care if bitten by one.

A rare rabies fatality involving a bat prompted U.S. health officials on Thursday to urge Americans to avoid direct contact with the winged mammals and seek prompt medical care if bitten by one. The warning comes four months after a 66-year-old California man died of rabies contracted when he was bitten in bed by a bat, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The unnamed man washed his wound but did not seek medical care for more than a month, by which time he was suffering from drowsiness, chronic headache, malaise and severe pain shooting through his right arm and across his chest. He received two rabies shots while hospitalized, but died on Sept. 14, according to the CDC report. Tests confirmed that he had been infected with a rabies strain carried by the silver-haired bat. Linda Demma, an epidemiologist with the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases, said the man would have lived had he sought medical treatment right after being bitten. The report did not specify how the bat had entered the house but said the man released it after it bit him. Rabies is a fast-spreading, incurable and fatal disease usually transmitted through an animal bite or contact with the secretions of infected animals with open wounds. The only documented survivors received a rabies vaccine before the onset of the illness. The vaccine usually consists of five separate jabs administered over four weeks. “It is extremely effective. I don’t think there has been a single vaccine failure,” Demma said. Bats, which often live in caves, abandoned buildings and attics, accounted for 24 of the 32 human rabies cases reported in the United States between 1990 and 2000. About 10 percent of the nocturnal creatures typically carry rabies. (SOURCE: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Reuters Health, Jan, 2004.