Editor’s note: This article is included to emphasize the importance of WCOs educating themselves, their employees and their customers about the very real danger of rabies. Since WCOs routinely handle animals that may carry the rabies virus, getting a rabies vaccination may prove to be very wise. Developing literature to leave behind with customers may also be a good practice.
A 6-year-old boy in Florida who reportedly touched a sick bat after his father told him not to has died after contracting rabies. Ryker Roque died January 15, 2018 at a hospital in Orlando.
Henry Roque, the boy’s father, had found a rabid bat, put it in a bucket and told his son not to touch it, but Ryker did anyway, and was scratched. The father said he washed Ryker’s wound but didn’t take his son to the hospital because he cried when he told him he’d have to get shots.
About a week later, Ryker developed numb fingers and a headache, so his parents took him to the hospital for treatment. The child was placed into a medically-induced coma as part of the Milwaukee protocol — an experimental treatment used on those affected by the rabies virus. The Milwaukee protocol has been credited with saving the life of a handful of infected patients. The first was a Wisconsin teenager named Jeanna Giese, whose survival without the rabies vaccine in 2004 was credited to the experimental treatment.
Rabies is almost always fatal once symptoms develop. A vaccine given after a wound but prior to symptoms almost always prevents the disease. The number of rabies deaths over the last century in the U.S. has declined, according to the CDC, https://www.cdc. gov/rabies/location/usa/index. html. The more than 100 annual deaths around the year 1900 dropped to just one or two per year in the 1990s. More than 90% of all animal cases reported annually to CDC now occur in wildlife; before 1960, the majority were in domestic animals. The principal rabies hosts today are wild carnivores and bats.
“It is important to avoid direct contact with wildlife,” Mara Gambineri, a Florida Health Department spokeswoman, said. “If you believe you may have been exposed to rabies, including any physical contact with a bat, contact your health care provider and your county health department right away.”
Gambineri added that untreated rabies can cause nearly a 100 percent fatal illness in humans, and that the virus poses a great risk for unvaccinated pets. According to the report, raccoons and bats are the main wildlife sources of rabies in Florida, while outside cats are the most common domestic animals to carry the virus.