Rabies

The city of Los Angeles is offering clinics through September at which dogs can receive anti-rabies vaccinations for $4. Dog licenses may also be available at some of the clinics, sponsored by the Department of Animal Regulation. Licenses cost $20 for unsterilized dogs and $10 for sterilized dogs. Proof of sterilization is required. California law requires that all dogs over the age of 4 months be inoculated against rabies.

A Maryland transplant recipient has died of rabies after receiving an infected organ from a donor, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Friday. The CDC said that three other patients also received organs from the rabies-infected donor and were now receiving rabies shots. Transmission of rabies through donated organs is extremely rare. "The organ transplant occurred more than a year before the recipient developed symptoms and died of rabies," read a CDC press statement.

Residents of South Dakota's state capital are holding their noses this fall and it has nothing to do with politics. The city of Pierre is being invaded by skunks. Animal control officials say that 60 of the furry little stinkers have been caught since June and in a town of 15,000. That translates to one possible skunk encounter for every 250 residents. But there's an even worse danger: skunks are often rabid. “Skunks are the reservoir of rabies out here on the Great Plains,” South Dakota state epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger told the Los Angeles Times.

A 34-year-old man died in Switzerland this summer from rabies contracted from a bat in Contra Costa County - the first such death traced to the county in nearly 20 years, officials announced Friday. The man, whose name has not been released, became ill before leaving the United States to work overseas. He died in a hospital in July, according to Contra Costa Health Services. Tests confirmed rabies as the cause of death. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was notified of the death in late August and launched an investigation.

Drought conditions in Arizona are contributing to what state health officials expect to be a record-breaking year for the number of animal rabies infections. The state tied last year's record of 129 animals testing positive for rabies when a bat was found on a Phoenix mountain this week. Reports of rabid foxes chasing hikers and rabid bats floating in pools are more common, said Craig Levy of the Arizona Department of Health Services.

About 90 elementary school students in Stevensville have started a series of rabies shots after a parent let them touch a dead bat that was later confirmed to be rabid. The mother of two students gave presentations last week in five classrooms and allowed the children to touch the dead bat. She offered each student who touched it a sanitary wipe. The students will receive six shots of anti-rabies vaccine, paid for by the school and its liability insurer. The cost could exceed $150,000.

A university fraternity member was treated for possible exposure to rabies, and he and two others could be expelled for beating, skinning and then eating a raccoon that might have had the disease, the fraternity's president said. The men had spotted the raccoon behaving erratically outside the Phi Kappa Psi house at the University of Georgia on Dec. 12.

Police marksmen went looking for foxes and wild dogs on Wednesday as authorities tried to curb an outbreak of rabies that has left one 8-year-old boy dead.

Officials notified parents of nearly 1,000 Girl Scouts that their daughters may have been exposed to rabies at a camp after bats were found in some of the sleeping shelters. About 1% of bats are thought to carry rabies.

Scientists have documented the first human death in the United States from raccoon rabies. A 25-year-old office worker from Virginia died in March after 14 days in the hospital, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported. Genetic analysis of tissue samples by the CDC determined the man had gotten rabies from a raccoon. Doctors could not figure out how or when the man became infected, despite extensive interviews with relatives, friends and co-workers.

Residents of South Dakota's state capital are holding their noses this fall and it has nothing to do with politics. The city of Pierre is being invaded by skunks. Animal control officials say that 60 of the furry little stinkers have been caught since June and in a town of 15,000. That translates to one possible skunk encounter for every 250 residents. But there's an even worse danger: skunks are often rabid. “Skunks are the reservoir of rabies out here on the Great Plains,” South Dakota state epidemiologist Lon Kightlinger told the Los Angeles Times.

Rabies is generally thought to be universally fatal, but new evidence suggests that is not always the case. A study in Peru suggests that some people -- admittedly a very small percentage of the population -- may have a natural resistance to the rabies virus that protects them from serious illness when they become infected. The results suggest that it may be possible to develop new ways to prevent and treat rabies. Most Americans associate rabies with dogs, but the virus is most commonly carried by bats.  Experts estimate that rabies kills at least 55,000 people each year in Africa and Asia alone, and the disease appears to be on the rise in China, the former Soviet republics, and Central and South America.

The first reported case of human rabies linked to a vampire bat was reported today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The case, which happened about a year ago, resulted in the death of a 19-year-old man from Mexico. In the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report , the case went down this way: The man's mother said her son had been bitten on the heel of his left foot while he was sleeping. The man, who has living in Michoacán, Mexico, apparently never reported the bite or was treated for it. Ten days later he traveled to Louisiana to work at a sugarcane plantation, where after one day of work he got medical help for a variety of symptoms, including fatigue, pain in his left shoulder and numbness in his left hand.

Linda Cree and her husband haven't dared to go outside to sit by their pool in the two months since furry black bats began invading their Moorpark backyard. They found three drowned in the pool, she said. Some flopped around on the ground in a pitiful death dance before growing still. She found one clinging to her screen door when she went out to get the morning paper, said Cree, 65, a homemaker. Of the eight bats she reported to Animal Control, seven tested positive for rabies.

Some raccoons carry it. Dogs can too. And let's not forget bats, cats and rats. USC Coach Kevin O'Neill wants his players to have it as well, since he thinks it will increase their intensity. "I always tell our guys, play like you have a shot of rabies in you," he said after his team's 67-46 win over UCLA at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday. "Play like you have rabies." By his account, they did, minus the foaming mouths. After slow starts in their previous two games -- both losses -- the Trojans came out more aggressively and jumped out to a 30-13 lead in the first half.

About 90 elementary school students in Stevensville have started a series of rabies shots after a parent let them touch a dead bat that was later confirmed to be rabid. The mother of two students gave presentations last week in five classrooms and allowed the children to touch the dead bat. She offered each student who touched it a sanitary wipe. The students will receive six shots of anti-rabies vaccine, paid for by the school and its liability insurer. The cost could exceed $150,000.

Gov. Gary Locke, his wife and their infant daughter are getting rabies shots as a precaution after he spotted a bat circling above the baby's crib, a spokeswoman said. The Lockes don't think they were bitten, but a bat bite can go unnoticed. They took the advice of doctors and began the shots last weekend.

Rabies among raccoons has begun spreading from the East Coast into the Midwest, the government warned Friday. A rabid raccoon was captured in May in Poland, Ohio, three miles from the Pennsylvania line, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Rabies strikes pets, farm animals, wild animals and humans. In the Northeast, the raccoon is the primary carrier of the virus. Raccoons accounted for about half of the 7,881 animal rabies cases in the United States in 1995, the CDC said.

Chris Sabo was hiking in northern Arizona in mid-April when he felt teeth gripping his ankle. He thought a rattler was biting him. But latched onto his foot was a rabid gray fox, probably the same one that had bitten a Massachusetts man three times scarcely an hour before. Sabo captured his persistent attacker by stepping on its neck and holding it down. "It was obvious it wasn't in its right mind," he said. Across Arizona, there have been an above-normal 54 cases of rabies reported since January, some of them, like Sabo's encounter with the fox, involving attacks on people.

A bat found at an apartment complex has tested positive for rabies, health officials said Friday. Anyone known to have had contact with the animal found March 22 at the Canyon Village Apartments in the 1200 block of North Chrisden Street should call the Orange County Health Care Agency at (714) 834-7792. "Initial reports are that some children may have been in the vicinity of the bat before it was picked up," said Dr. Hildy Meyers, the county's director of public health epidemiology.