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Article: Risk for Rabies Transmission from Encounters with Bats, Colorado, 1977-1996.
- Article from:
- Emerging Infectious Diseases
- Article date:
- May 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To assess the risk for rabies transmission to humans by bats, we analyzed the prevalence of rabies in bats that encountered humans from 1977 to 1996 and characterized the bat-human encounters. Rabies was diagnosed in 685 (15%) of 4,470 bats tested. The prevalence of rabies in bats that bit humans was 2.1 times higher than in bats that did not bite humans. At least a third of the encounters were preventable.
Although no cases of human rabies have been reported since 1931 in Colorado, rabies remains a health risk in this state because of the frequency with which Coloradans have contact with bats. The first objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of ...