Bat's bite leads to rabies injections for students

Professor Michael Nachman's Ecology 485/585 mammalogy course took two field trips to the Southwest Research Station, near Portal. The first on Sept. 5 through Sept. 7 and the second last weekend. Thirty-five to 40 students participated in the field trips, Nachman said.

Currently, the four students are being given a post-exposure treatment for possible exposure to rabies, according to Joyce Meder, clinic administrator for the Campus Health Center.

Meder said one of the four students received a bite during the field trip and has subsequently started a series of six shots, administered in the arm, to help combat the possibility of actually contracting rabies.

The series of shots consists of one globulin and five rabies injections, Meder said.

The three students that did not receive an actual bite, but are being treated, have been described as having a "significant risk of exposure" to rabies, Meder said.

Following the field trip and exposure to the bats, Meder and Lisette LeCorgne, a nurse practitioner at Campus Health, administered a questionnaire to the students in order to determine the level of risk to exposure that each student incurred.

Which students should be treated was based on responses from the students in conjunction with assistance from Health Department officials.

Nachman said the risk of exposure to rabies from the type of animals encountered during the field trip is very small.

"Bats carry rabies in varying rates," Nachman said. "There have been no known rate of (rabies) transmission in nectar bats in Arizona."

Nachman also said the students being treated have made the decision (to be treated) on their own and the precautions being taken in this instance are "very conservative."

Each member of the teaching team, three teaching assistants and Nachman, are required to receive the pretreatment rabies series for the course. Only those individuals handle the bats directly.

Nachman said all of the students were informed of the risks involved in handling wild mammals, such as bats. In addition, it is not a course policy that students must have direct contact with the animals.

Russ Dyer, biology senior and student in Nachman's mammalogy course, said none of the students was forced to handle the animals.

"The bats were mostly handled by the TAs," Dyer said.

While there is always a small concern for rabies, Nachman said he and others involved with this class take precautions for all diseases that they may encounter in this type of work. He also said there were other diseases that people should be more concerned with, such as the Hanta virus in rodents.