Doctors urge immediate public health consultation after any bat contact, even without a visible bite or scratch
An 11-year-old boy died of a rabies infection in Ontario, Canada, according to a medical journal article published Monday.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal did not identify the boy or his family but wrote that he was first brought to a hospital weeks after an encounter with a bat.
“The patient’s family reported that, during a visit to a cottage in northern Ontario 19 days before symptom onset, the boy had been awoken by a bat on his nose and mouth. He had swatted the bat off his face; his father had caught the bat in a cooking pot and released it outside,” CMAJ wrote.