A medical article revealed the death of an 11-year-old boy in Ontario, Canada, after he contracted rabies from contact with a bat.Although The Canadian Medical Association Journal, which published the case report last Monday, did not reveal the identity of the child or his family members, it explained in its report that the boy was admitted to the hospital weeks after the bat exposure incident, which occurred while the family was on vacation at a cabin in northern Ontario.
According to what the magazine quoted from the child's parents, the incident began 19 days before the first symptoms appeared, when the boy woke up to a bat landing on his nose and mouth while he was sleeping.
The boy shooed the bat away from his face with his hand, while his father managed to catch the bat using a cooking pot and release it outside.
The medical report indicated that the child did not show any visible wounds or scratches on his face, and the parents did not notice any abnormal behavior on the part of the bat, which led them not to seek a medical evaluation at that time.
The boy's health did not deteriorate until 20 days after the incident, when his parents brought him to the emergency room of a hospital. He was initially discharged, but his symptoms progressed rapidly, and he was readmitted the following morning for treatment.
The doctors overseeing the case confirmed that the child's health "deteriorated very rapidly" by the evening of that day, but he remained in the hospital for more than two weeks before passing away.
The article stated that the child lost brainstem reflexes by the fifth day of his hospital stay, and it was decided to stop life-sustaining treatments on the seventeenth day, after which the child died with his family members by his side.
Doctors warned of the dangers of any direct human contact with bats, even in the absence of visible bites or scratches, stressing the need to inform health authorities immediately of any such contact.
It is worth noting that rabies is almost 100% fatal in humans if the infected person does not receive immediate post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), while this treatment is almost certainly successful if it is given in a timely manner and immediately after exposure.
