Canadian boy died after awaking to rabies-infected bat on his face
A Canadian boy died from rabies weeks after he woke up with a bat on his face, a new report in a medical journal has revealed.
The 11-year-old boy was visiting a cottage in northern Ontario in 2024 when he was awoken by the bat on his nose and mouth, doctors from the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba said in the Canadian Medical Association Journal report.
The boy died weeks after coming into contact with a bat in northern Ontario, Canada. Getty
The boy, who was not named in the report, swatted the bat off his face and his father caught the animal in a cooking pot and released it outside.
Since he didn’t have any visible bite or scratch marks and his parents didn’t consider the bat had behaved erratically, medical attention wasn’t sought for the boy.
A couple of weeks later the boy’s parents took him to an urgent care clinic after he developed numbness, pins and needles and swelling on the right side of his face.
Physicians there presumed he had Bell’s palsy and the herpes simplex virus, which manifests in cold sores, and sent him home with medication.
Three days later his symptoms worsened and he developed vomiting and pain when swallowing, so his parents took him to the emergency department at a hospital in urban Ontario.
The boy’s test results were largely normal, so doctors again discharged the boy with a diagnosis of herpes gingivostomatitis, or painful ulcers on the gums and sores on the mouth.
Overnight, he developed a loss of appetite, slurred speech, decreased sensation and facial weakness, prompting the family to return to the ED in the morning.
While he was waiting to be admitted, the boy developed a fever, and became confused and started hallucinating and had difficulty swallowing even saliva.
A scan of tissue infected with rabies. Getty
The boy’s condition deteriorated rapidly and he was intubated and admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit of the hospital (PICU).
“When we saw the patient in the PICU, we strongly suspected rabies, given the bat exposure and typical neurologic features,” the authors wrote.
Four days later, test results confirmed the boy had a bat variant of the rabies virus and health authorities alerted the public.
The 11-year-old boy’s life support was turned off two and a half weeks after he was first admitted to hospital.
Authors of the report noted his brain had stopped functioning on day five of his hospital stay.
Rabies is extremely rare in Australia and Canada, but once contracted it carries an almost 100 per cent fatality rate.
“Death typically occurs within 7 to 14 days of symptom onset, although supportive critical care may delay the timing of death,” the report read.
“Despite decades of research, no proven effective therapy exists after symptom onset.”
The 11-year-old boy was the first reported case of locally acquired rabies in Ontario since 1967, the doctors said.
There are no land-living animals in Australia that have rabies, but there are bat populations that carry a similar disease called Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV).
The last death in Australia from a rabies-like illness occurred in July last year when a man in his 50s from northern New South Wales died from ABLV.
Craig “Zebbo” Nolte, a carpenter in his 50s from Ballina, died on July 3, 2025 after suffering a “very quick case of lyssavirus”, a rare disease closely related to rabies. Facebook
In North America, bats, skunks, raccoons, and foxes can carry the disease.
Across the world, dogs are the most common carriers of rabies.
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