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Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth, January 2008
A 34-year-old woman was admitted to hospital in Amsterdam 26 days after a brush with a bat in Kenya. There was no bite but the woman sustained two scratches on the side of her nose which bled. No special care or first aid was given to the woman following the incident with the bat. Local advice was that there was no rabies in bats in Kenya; the disease is thought to be a problem spread by dog bites in the region: there had never been a death from rabies recorded in Kenya that was blamed on a bat. The woman’s symptoms – difficulty with speech, walking and odd sensations of the skin of the face – pointed to a disorder of the nervous system and rabies was suspected immediately by the Dutch doctors. All possible treatments were given to the woman but she died 23 days after becoming ill, in early December 2007.
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