A medical journal article is urging the public to seek immediate medical assessment after any direct contact with a bat, after an Ontario boy died of rabies in 2024 despite having no visible marks.
The boy’s death highlights “an important gap in public awareness,” where individuals may decide not to seek medical care after an encounter simply because no obvious bite or scratch is visible, the article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) says.
While bats infected with rabies may demonstrate erratic behaviour such as difficulty flying or appearing in the daytime, the absence of such behaviour does not indicate that rabies is not present, the article says….