An 11-year-old Canadian boy died of rabies after being bitten by a bat in his sleep.
As per a newly published report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (via The Daily Mail), the boy had been spending the summer of 2024 in Northern Ontario. According to the case report, he was peacefully sleeping when he awoke to find a bat perched directly on his face, covering his nose and mouth.
He swatted the bat away and woke up his parents, with his father capturing it and releasing it back into the wild. Knowing the dangers of a bat bite, his parents carefully examined his face for bites or scratches, but found no sign the bat had injured him in any way.
For 19 days, things seemed normal, but the boy then began to feel unwell and began vomiting. He also began to feel “vague discomfort”, which escalated into unexplained neurological symptoms, with tingling and numbness on one side of his face.
His family told doctors about the bat incident, but insisted that there hadn’t been a bite mark. But, after other diagnoses were ruled out, they finally conducted a rabies test, which came back positive. This delay meant that it was too late to administer an anti-rabies shot, and the virus had gotten into his central nervous system.
“Aggressive supportive care”
There is no cure for rabies once it takes hold, but the boy was admitted to hospital and placed in intensive care. Over the next two weeks of “aggressive supportive care” his condition continued to worsen, and life support was eventually withdrawn, resulting in his death.
The World Health Organization reports that there are around 59,000 rabies deaths in humans per year, with 95% of those occurring in Africa and Asia. It’s far rarer in North America, with it noted that this boy’s death was the first rabies death in Ontario since 1967. But his family wants this tragic situation to raise awareness among parents.
Dr Brian Hummel, a pediatric infectious disease specialist involved in the case, said:
“It was important to us and to the family to take the opportunity to find learning experiences and lessons that we could take from his case to try and help spread awareness and understanding of rabies infection and risks.”
He went on to underline that rabies isn’t only transmitted by wounds, saying that even brief skin contact on the face by an animal suspected of having rabies or that’s known to carry the virus asymptomatically should trigger an immediate medical assessment for post-exposure rabies treatment.
Published: Jun 30, 2026 10:59 am