38 dead after being bitten by vampire bats
* Story Highlights
* Rabid bats suspected in deaths of Venezuelan villagers
* Venezuelan health officials are investigating the outbreak
* Bats' normal roosts may have been disturbed, putting them closer
to humans
* If rabies is confirmed, officials say a vaccination campaign will
begin
*http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/08/vampire.bats.ap/index.html
*
*CARACAS, Venezuela (AP)* -- At least 38 Warao Indians have died in
remote villages in Venezuela, and medical experts suspect an outbreak of
rabies spread by bites from vampire bats.
Laboratory investigations have yet to confirm the cause, but the
symptoms point to rabies, according to two researchers from the
University of California at Berkeley and other medical experts.
The two UC Berkeley researchers -- the husband-and-wife team of
anthropologist Charles Briggs and public health specialist Dr. Clara
Mantini-Briggs -- said the symptoms include fever, body pains, tingling
in the feet followed by progressive paralysis, and an extreme fear of
water. Victims tend to have convulsions and grow rigid before death.
Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, agreed with their preliminary
diagnosis.
"The history and clinical signs are compatible with rabies," Rupprecht
told The Associated Press on Friday. "Prevention is straightforward:
Prevent bites and vaccinate those at risk of bites."
Venezuelan <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Venezuela> health officials are
investigating the outbreak and plan to distribute mosquito nets to
prevent bat bites and send a medical boat to provide treatment in remote
villages on the Orinoco River delta, Indigenous Peoples Minister Nicia
Maldonado said Thursday, according to the state-run Bolivarian News Agency.
Outbreaks of rabies spread by vampire bats are a problem in various
tropical areas of South America, including Brazil and Peru, Rupprecht said.
He said researchers suspect that in some cases environmental degradation
-- including mining, logging or dam construction projects -- may also be
contributing to rabies outbreaks.
"Vampire bats are very adaptable," Rupprecht said. And when their roosts
are disrupted or their normal prey grow scarce, "Homo sapiens is a
pretty easy meal."
More study is needed to confirm through blood or other samples from
victims that it is the rabies <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Rabies>
virus in Venezuela, researchers say.
At least 38 Warao Indians have died since June 2007, and at least 16
have died in the past two months, according to a report the Berkeley
researchers and indigenous leaders provided to Venezuelan officials this
week.
One village, Mukuboina, lost eight of its roughly 80 inhabitants -- all
of them children, Briggs said. All victims throughout the area died
within two to seven days from the onset of symptoms, he said.
During a study trip Briggs and Mantini-Briggs made through 30 villages
in the river delta, relatives said the victims had been bitten by bats.
The couple have worked among the Warao in Delta Amacuro state for years
and were invited by indigenous leaders to study the outbreak.
"It's a monster illness," said Tirso Gomez, a Warao traditional healer
who said the indigenous group of more than 35,000 people has never
experienced anything similar.
Mantini-Briggs, a Venezuelan former health official, said she was
surprised to find many Warao villages now have cats -- a new
development. "The Waraos told us it was because there were too many bats
that were biting the children," she said.
Another tropical medicine expert, Dr. Daniel Bausch of Tulane University
in New Orleans, agreed the symptoms and accounts suggest rabies
transmitted by bats, and if confirmed, "probably a vaccination campaign
would be in order."
The researchers have begun taking precautions. Mantini-Briggs said she
started to wonder about her own health Friday while talking with
biologist Omar Linares, a bat expert at Simon Bolivar University.
She remembered there was blood on her sheet after sleeping in a hammock
in a Warao village two weeks ago. Initially she had dismissed it as an
unimportant insect bite or something else, but she remembered her finger
hurting that morning and that she saw two small red dots there.
Confirming it must have been a bat bite, Linares suggested she get
rabies shots immediately.
"I'm sure a bat bit me," she said. "I remembered and said 'I'm going to
get vaccinated.' "
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