People in WA’s north are being warned to leave bats alone after some recent reports of bites.<\/p>\n
A Pilbara resident said she did not realise how serious a bat bite could be until doctors told her she would need to be treated for lyssavirus.<\/p>\n
Bat lyssavirus is found in a small proportion of the Pilbara’s bat population but can be deadly. Anyone bitten by a bat is advised to seek urgent medical attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Karratha resident, Elizabeth Heseltine said she was trying to get a bat out of her house when she was bitten.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After catching the bat with her bare hands, Ms Heseltine was bitten.\u00a0 (Supplied: Elizabeth Heseltine)<\/p>\n
She said she was concerned the bat would get stuck in her roof, or eaten by her cats, so she tried to catch it, first with a towel and then with her hands.<\/p>\n
It was then the bat bit her.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t think anything of it \u2014 I mean, I’ve worked around animals my whole life and just thought ‘oh well, it’s fine, Australia’s pretty disease free’,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Heseltine called the Health Direct line, which advised her to attend hospital immediately to seek treatment.<\/p>\n
“I spent most of the day there and can tell you from experience that the course of treatment is not overly pleasant,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I still have to go back to the hospital three more times for follow up injections.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Heseltine said she did not realise a bat bite could be so serious.\u00a0 (ABC Pilbara: Kimberley Putland)<\/p>\n
Ms Heseltine was treated with immunoglobulin injections in her finger.<\/p>\n
She said doctors told her she was not the only one to be bitten by a bat.<\/p>\n
“The doctor made a joke about whether it was a full moon or not, because apparently I’m like the fourth person recently to get bitten by a bat,” she said.<\/p>\n
Out of character<\/p>\n
Curtin University professor of ecology, Bill Bateman, said the main concern with bat bites was transmission of lyssavirus.<\/p>\n
“We do have Australian bat lyssavirus, and that is very, very similar to rabies and it has a very, very high mortality rate if humans get it,” Dr Bateman said.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Department of Health said there has so far never been a case reported in WA.<\/p>\n
Dr Bateman said lyssavirus was only present in about one per cent of Pilbara bat populations.<\/p>\n
“Fortunately, only a tiny percentage of bats have been shown to have [lyssavirus], but of course it’s just not worth taking the risk if you get in any way scratched by a bat,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Professor Bill Bateman says if bats are left alone, they will leave people alone.\u00a0 (ABC News: Ruby Littler)<\/p>\n
He said bats generally avoided people, and attacks were out of character.<\/p>\n
“They’re not aggressive and lyssavirus doesn’t necessarily make them more aggressive,” Dr Bateman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But obviously if you’re a tiny little bat weighing a few grams and you get picked up by a human, the defence is to bite.<\/p>\n
“There’s about 17 species of bat up in the Pilbara area, but many of them don’t come anywhere near human houses.”<\/p>\n
Dr Bateman said bats may bite as a result of being ill, or people trying to get them out of their houses.<\/p>\n
“If the bat is flying around, the best thing to do really is just to open the window and the bat should find its way out,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Expert advice is to avoid contact with bats if they get into your home and just leave a window open.\u00a0 (ABC News: Conor Byrne)<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Department of Health said confirmation of lyssavirus required laboratory testing of patients with symptoms, and health practitioners were required to report suspected or confirmed cases.<\/p>\n
“Any person bitten, scratched, or exposed to a bat, anywhere in the world (including in Australia), should seek medical attention as soon as possible to care for the wound and to assess whether they are at risk of infection,” the statement said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“People who are bitten or scratched by a bat may require rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin to prevent Australian bat lyssavirus infection.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People in WA’s north are being warned to leave bats alone after some recent reports of bites. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,136859,136858,136860,136862,46059,136861,105],"class_list":["post-226242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bat-attacks","tag-bat-bites","tag-leaf-nosed-bat","tag-lyssavirus","tag-microbat","tag-pilbara-bats","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}