An 11-year-old boy from Canada died from rabies after a bat landed on his face while he was sleeping at a family cottage in Ontario.
The case happened during a family trip in 2024 and was detailed in a report published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
According to the report, the boy woke up to find a bat covering his nose and mouth. He knocked it away, and his father caught it in a pot before releasing it outside.
Because the boy didn’t have any visible bite marks or scratches, and the bat didn’t seem to be acting strangely, his parents didn’t think they had to take him to the doctor.
About 19 days later, the boy started experiencing swelling and numbness on his face.
Over the next several days, his family took him to emergency clinics and the hospital as doctors tried to determine what was causing his symptoms.
At his first visit, doctors believed he could have Bell’s palsy, a condition that temporarily weakens the muscles on one side of the face.
He was prescribed an antiviral medication commonly used to treat infections caused by herpes viruses.
He later returned to the hospital, where doctors suspected he had herpes gingivostomatitis, a viral infection that affects the mouth and gums.
When the weakness on the right side of his face got worse the following day, his parents took him back to the doctor.
While waiting to be admitted, his condition quickly deteriorated.
He developed a fever of 39C (102F), had trouble swallowing, became confused, and experienced visual hallucinations.
He was later placed on a ventilator and transferred to the pediatric intensive care unit.
Doctors at the University of Manitoba’s Department of Pediatrics and Child Health soon suspected rabies.
A few days later, testing confirmed he had rabies; the Canadian Food Inspection Agency also identified a bat strain of the rabies virus.
The boy died 17 days after being admitted to the hospital.
The report noted that he had no recent travel outside Canada, no tick bites, no known allergies, and was not in contact with anyone who was sick.
Human rabies cases are extremely uncommon in Canada.
According to the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, there have been just 28 rabies-related deaths in the country since 1924.
The association credits long-running vaccination programs for keeping rabies cases low and says the disease could return if those efforts stop.
Health experts say anyone who has direct contact with a bat should receive rabies post-exposure treatment as soon as possible after the encounter.
Once rabies symptoms begin, the infection is almost always fatal.
