It had been a busy July day in the Emergency Department (ED) with several patients coming in for being heat-related illnesses as well as several trauma patients injured in car accidents. The triage nurse called me to let me know that several young adults had checked in to the triage to receive prophylactic rabies vaccines as they were all exposed to rabies while at a summer camp. I briefly recalled seeing an email from the health department about this and I went to talk to the patients to get more history about what had happened.
In speaking with these young adults, they were attending a summer camp and woke up with numerous bats in their tents one morning. Several campers reported being bitten by the bats and several others said the bats were touching their arms and legs. There were over 200 campers exposed in this scenario. The Ohio Department of Health recommended that all the potentially exposed campers be offered rabies prophylaxis.
Rabies is a virus that is transmitted from animals to humans that infects the central nervous system. Symptoms, which include confusion, hallucinations, abnormal behavior, fear of water, insomnia, coma and death, can occur from days to years after exposure. It is a serious public health problem in many countries, most prevalent in Asia and Africa. Rabies is estimated to cause 70,000 deaths annually, 40% of deaths being children under age 15.