Global alert over deadly bat virus

AUSTRALIA: Experts on infectious diseases Thursday warned people to stay away from bats worldwide after the recent death of an eight-year-old boy bitten in Australia.

The boy last month became the third person in the country to die of Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV), for which there is no effective treatment.

Doctors Joshua Francis and Clare Nourse of Brisbane’s Mater Children’s Hospital warned an infectious diseases conference that human-to-human transmission of the virus may be possible. Francis said the boy was bitten during a family holiday to Queensland in December 2012, but did not tell his parents.

Three weeks later he began to suffer convulsions, abdominal pain and fever, followed by progressive brain problems.

Doctors frantically tried to establish what was wrong and on day 10 of his admission the lyssavirus was detected.

He fell into a coma and died on February 22.

AFP