WARNING: Video is very graphic.
U.S. health authorities have announced the first death by a vampire bat in the United States.
According to the AFP, on July 15, 2010, a 19-year-old man was bitten by a vampire bat in Michoacan, Mexico. Ten days later, the migrant farm worker left for the U.S. to pick sugar cane at a Louisiana plantation. He fell sick, presenting symptoms of fatigue, shoulder pain, numbness in his left hand and a drooping left eye.
Tests later confirmed that the teenager had rabies. There is no cure for rabies and the youth died within days after his family took him off life support. The only time rabies can be stopped is before the onset of symptos. This is the first human death from vampire bat rabies in the United States. To date, no vampire bats exist in the United States. According to the CDC:
“Although vampire bats currently are found only in Latin America, research suggests that the range of these bats might be expanding as a result of changes in climate. Expansion of vampire bats into the United States likely would lead to increased bat exposures to both humans and animals (including domestic livestock and wildlife species) and substantially alter rabies virus dynamics and ecology in the southern United States.”
