RABIES AND FEAR

If public health warnings were based on actual probability of harm, contracting rabies from bats would rank near the bottom of the list of threats.  Due to successful dog and cat vaccination programs, rabies is now the second rarest disease in the United States and Canada, behind polio.  Only one or two human cases are reported annually.  To put such a rate in perspective, more people are hit by shopping carts annually than have contracted rabies from bats in the last 30 years!  Many people are injured while trying to escape from bats than injured from the bats themselves.

WHAT IS RABIES?

Rabies is a viral infection that affects the nervous system of mammals.  It is usually transmitted by contact with an open wound or mucous membranes of a rabid animal’s saliva or nervous tissue.  Non-bite exposure to the virus is extremely rare.  There is no evidence of transmission through contact with urine or feces.  The incubation period (the period between exposure and onset of symptoms) ranges from two weeks to many months.  Like other viral infections, rabies does not respond to antibiotic treatment.  It is almost always fatal once symptoms occur.  These symptoms may include behavior changes, like aggressiveness or paralysis (frequently beginning in the hind legs or the throat of an animal). Prompt vaccination after a bite can often prevent rabies in humans.  Periodic vaccinations in dogs, cats and livestock, prior to exposure, can also protect these animals against disease.

HOW IS POSSIBLE EXPOSURE TREATED?

Modern rabies treatment is highly effective and relatively painless.  According to the Center for Disease Control, cases of possible rabies exposure are typically treated with human immunoglobulin (HRIG), and a human diploid cell vaccine (HDCV).  The injections are given as soon as possible following exposure, followed by subsequent vaccine doses on days 3, 7, 14, and 30.  In the past as many as 21 painful injections were used in the stomach.

BATS AND RABIES

Rabies is prevalent throughout the world.  In North America: skunk rabies is found in the central and Midwest regions; fox rabies, in eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S.; raccoon rabies, in the southeastern and mid-Atlantic states; and bat rabies is found throughout the U.S. and Canada.  Worldwide more than 30,000 humans die from rabies each year.  Ninety-nine percent of these deaths are due to contact with rabid dogs, the most important vector of human rabies in the world.

Like all mammals, a few bats contract rabies.  Bats submitted for rabies testing have either bitten a person or a pet or have acted abnormally.  Most bats examined therefore do not represent a random sampling and the actual percentage of rabid bats is much lower than percentages that are listed from the health department. The instance of rabies in a free-living population of bats is less than 1/2 of a percent. There is no evidence that bats can transmit rabies without being ill.  Bats, like other mammals, become sick and eventually die from the disease.  Rabid bats rarely attack humans without being provoked. Like other wild animals, bats will try to defend themselves if you force direct contact with them.

CAN A PERSON BE VACCINATED BEFORE EXPORSURE?

Rabies pre-exposure vaccination is three doses of human diploid vaccine (HDCV) administered in the arm during a month’s time.  People who handle wildlife regularly should consider getting it.