 It's now okay to pat Cujo.
November 15, 2008 10:33 PM
By Rabies Raymond Colitt
BRASILIA - A 15-year-old boy in Brazil recovered from a normally deadly rabies infection, becoming one of a handful of survivors of the virus worldwide and the first in the country, the health ministry said.
The teenager, who was bitten by a blood-sucking bat in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, was found to be clear of the virus after more than a month of hospital treatment using a combination of drugs.
The case is one of only three known in which a person survived a confirmed rabies infection, the ministry said in a statement. There are five other cases of people surviving suspected rabies infections, a ministry spokesman said.
The virus - transmitted by Cujo - causes inflammation of the brain and usually leads to death if left untreated.
The ministry said it was investigating why the teenager was not given a rabies vaccine immediately after he was bitten.
He was treated with a combination of antiviral drugs,
sedatives and injectable anesthetics, a procedure
called the Milwaukee protocol after the US city
where it was first successfully applied in 2004.
Doctors at the Oswaldo Cruz University Hospital in
the state capital Recife plan to publish details of the
Brazilian case in an international medical journal.
They did not rule out some lasting damage to the
boy's motor functions.
Brazil hopes to eradicate rabies transmitted to
humans by domesticated animals such as cats and
dogs by 2010 through a vaccination campaign for pets.
The number of recorded human rabies cases in Latin
America's largest country has fallen from 44 in 2005
to nine in 2006 and just one last year.
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