One person has died and more than forty have been admitted to hospitals on suspicion of contracting rabies in northwestern Brazil as a result of attacks by vampire bats. No human deaths from rabies have been reported in this Latin American country since 2004.
The authorities attribute the increase in bats' attacks to the general increase in their number and the spread of their nests near residential buildings. On May 27, the local Communicable Disease Control Services of the Bahia State Department of Health launched an extensive campaign to euthanize the bats. The bats were caught and their bodies were smeared with a special poisonous paste, which the mice then transfer to each other upon contact, reports the Daily Mail.
The deceased 46-year-old man worked on a farm, according to the department. The Brazilian was milking a cow and accidentally stepped on a bat that bit him. The man did not attach much importance to what had happened, limiting himself to washing the wound, and did not go to the doctors.
Three weeks later, the man was admitted to the hospital after suffering from headaches, nausea, anxiety and breathing problems for several days. Only then did the affected farmer remember what had happened. the tests carried out revealed rabies in him, but the time for treatment was already lost, and the man died.
Bahia's health department immediately issued a public message on the need for citizens to be alert and to go to hospitals in a timely manner. Within literally a few days after the incident, several residents of El Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia, reported being attacked by bats right in their homes, mostly at night. At the same time, many of them initially took mouse bites for ordinary cuts, and did not pay much attention to this.
The authorities recommend that local residents should never sleep with open doors and windows, be sure to use protective screens, fill up gaps in roofs and walls, illuminate dark rooms in houses and not leave unfinished fruits that attract bats at night in open places.