I vant to suck yer blood

Ok... this story has some severe freak out factor. I especially get creeped out by the line, "so anyone who awakens in a room with a bat, should assume they have been bit and immediately contact their family doctor and the local health unit". And then get some garlic, a cross, and a wooden stake. Yikes.

Rabid bat found in baby's room

An 11-month-old Newmarket girl is receiving rabies shots after a rabid bat was discovered Friday in her bedroom by her frantic mother.
“The central message here is that you can be bitten by a bat while you are sleeping and not know it,” Margaret McCaffery, with York Region’s health unit, said yesterday.

McCaffery said their teeth marks are virtually undetectable, so anyone who awakens in a room with a bat, should assume they have been bit and immediately contact their family doctor and the local health unit.

The infant, who has not been identified by health unit officials, is undergoing a series of five shots, spaced several days apart, as a preventative measure.

McCaffery said any danger of such a young child receiving the shots is outweighed by the seriousness of contracting rabies, a deadly disease.

“There is always a small risk with these shots, but once you get symptoms, shots are no longer affective,” she added.

The bat was caught in the home and sent on Friday to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which sent it to a lab in Ottawa.

The results, which confirmed the rabies diagnosis, were received Saturday.

The family was immediately notified and the child, who was already under a doctor’s care, began receiving shots soon after, McCaffery said.

This is the second rabid bat reported in York region so far this year. The first was found in the late spring, also in Newmarket.

In 2005, four rabid bats were found in York Region, five in 2004. Anyone in contact with them at the time also underwent preventative rabies treatment, McCaffery said.

“Every year, we treat numerous people with the rabies vaccine,” she added.

Rabies is a viral infection transmitted in the saliva of infected animals. The virus enters the central nervous system toward the spinal cord and the brain, where it multiplies and travels through the nerves to most parts of the body.

Rabies symptoms develop about 3-8 weeks after exposure, and by then there is no treatment. Death almost always follows within 2 to 6 days.

Some 20 people have died of the disease in Canada since 1925, including a BC man in 2003 and a nine-year-old Quebec boy, who was bitten by a bat at camp, in 2002.