I man in Dundee is possibly suffering from a European form of Rabies - possibly from a bat bite. Test results are due today.

Heres the full story.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2493825.stm

I heard on the radio that the tests came back negative - fortunately.

I wasn't aware that there was more than one form of rabies. How scary!

Within the past few months there's been a young boy die from rabies not very far from my home---inside the Tennessee Valley region of the US. He too caught it from a bat bite. Unfortunately, no one had any idea he had been bitten until he started displaying symptoms, and by that time, doctors said there was nothing they could do.

Which brings to mind a question. We routinely vaccinate our pets against rabies, and anyone who works in a vet's office MUST by law be vaccinated against this disease. So why isn't the vaccine available to pretty much everybody? Perhaps it's not much needed by city folk, but I live in a VERY rural area where bats and skunks (both carriers of the disease) are commonplace.

Anyone know about this?

That is a good question, but I guess they believe there isn't a high enough risk to do that or even go out and educate on the vaccine. Of course, there is a scare now and then, but look at how long it took for colleges and universities to start making students get meningitis vaccines. Like with the rabies vaccine, there is a group of people who had to be vaccinated, the military personal.

Meningitis in colleges and universities cause a scare now and then, but evidently not enough.

I believe the same train of thought runs for both of these cases.

When I was growing up in the 50's and 60's in Ontario, Canada, rabies was very common. Local raccoons (yes, they live very heartily in cities) and foxes and skunks, bats etc., were carriers. There was a very extensive education program through the school system regarding what to look for in animals as signs of rabies, how to report it, what to do and not to do, and the consequences of contracting rabies! The very painful "belly" shots of gamoglobulin(sp?) were enough to scare most kids into taking the subject seriously. But I don't remember vaccinations!

In New York State we periodically have a case or two.. several years back, there was a death from it in our exurban Sullivan County. Rabies is an particularly terrible disease, the progress of which is all the more rapid and inexorable the closer the bite is to the head. One horrible phrase, which recurs through the medical texts, has particular staying power... this being, "the mind remains mercilessly clear throughout". The antidote should certainly be kept on hand any place within temperate zones in which wildlife flourishes.
I doubt that rabies will ever be fully eradicated, as the animal reservoir for it is too extensive. But at the least we can be prepared for its occasional recrudescence.

The reason this was in the news is that the UK is free of rabies, we don't normally have an animal reservoir which why there is a great fuss when there is a possible case. Bats can obviously fly over from mainland Europe and can harbour the disease.

It has been confirmed, he does have rabies and is in a critical but stable condition.

This poor man has now died. The first person in the UK in over 100 years.

This particular form of rabies is supposed not to be transmitted to other animals such as foxes and dogs as bats don't normally bite, it was the handlng which would have caused the problem. The rabies concerned was European Bat Lyssavirus (EBL), a rare strain of the infection.

BBC Online

From what I am gathering he was handling the bats to paint them? It did say he was an animal lover and artist.

I was raised like most Americans who spent a lot of time in nature and in the mountains to have a very healthy respect for any rodents, bats or sundry creatures that might carry rabies or even at one point in the Lake Tahoe area, Bubonic plague. We even had squirrels with sleeping sickness in Northern California.
Isn't this a clearcut case of a person handling an animal that wasn't normally a biting animal?

We had raccoons visiting the house each night in Indiana, but the children were taught never to touch them...just watch them from a distance. The fleas can be a vector from what I was taught as a child.

Seems like a fluke that this fellow handled it, was bitten and then, it happened to have rabies.

The virulence of this awful disease, the apparent ease of its spread under certain circumstances, and the agonizing death that untreated sufferers face without hope only underscores the bravery and heroism of Louis Pasteur, who under highly dangerous and rather primitive circumstances in the 1880's, withdrew saliva from rabid dogs to ascertain if he could treat or prevent the disease.

You know I wasn't going to mention it to my contemporaries growing up in the sixties and seventies, but am I the only one who cries at the mere mention of Old Yeller?
For me, rabies is synonymous with the boy having to shoot his dog...can't shake it.
It is a really odd thing.

It doesn’t make me cry, but the very mention of the word “rabies” also makes the movie pop into my mind.

When I hear the word rabies it makes me think of "Cujo".

We were always taught to stay away from raccoons and other animals that got too close, because of the risk of rabies. One time my brother, our cousin and I went against what we were told, and made a pet out of a raccoon. We hid it in the barn for a few days, and went there to play with it. It got out of the makeshift cage we had made, and was wandering up toward the house one day and my cousin's dad was there to pick him up (Mom babysat him). Anyway, my cousin's dad could tell just by looking at him that there was a 99% chance he had rabies, so he shot the coon and took it in for testing. It ended up having rabies. We were incredibly lucky that none of us were bit!