A Medina County child is being treated for rabies in a Texas hospital, the Department of State Health Services reported last week. It is the first case of rabies in a human reported in the state since 2009. The child was bitten by a bat, according to DSHS.
Public health officials have identified all the places where someone could have come into contact with either the bat or the child. Experts are assessing the risk to those people and whether they should receive post-exposure vaccinations to prevent them from contracting rabies.
The department noted that rabies is almost always fatal once contracted, but is preventable if the vaccine and immune globulin are administered before symptoms begin. In Texas, according to DSHS, skunks and bats account for most animal rabies cases. Nearly 600 animals in Texas tested positive for rabies last year, about half of them bats.
