Rabies from a red tail hawk??!!

[TexasProgresive]

There was a piece on the news this morning about a Brooklyn woman who has red tail hawks nesting on her balcony. She was attacked by one of the birds and was treated for her wounds with antibiotics, tetanus shot and RABIES shots.

Rabies shots are extremely painful. Why would they put her through that ordeal from a bird attack-rabies is a mammal disease?

Maybe doctors in New York City think all animals are alike.

Edited to add link:
http://7online.com/news/brooklyn-woman-attacked-by-red-tailed-hawk/80317/

[JanMichael]

1. Rabies shots

are not "extremely painful." We were both treated (exposure to a bat) less than 9 months ago with the full series.

The old "shots in the stomach" routine isn't used anymore.

Maybe the doctor thought the bird could have attacked an animal that was carrying the virus- who knows. However, if there were any chance at all the person could have been exposed, they needed to be treated.

It's not that big of a deal anymore. I know that there was a person on here who was pretty dramatic about the treatment- but, we had to come to the conclusion that he or she has a fear of needles, or a very low pain tolerance for shots. The globulin shots on the first day are no worse than those old penicillin shots we used to get as kids- probably less painful-

[TexasProgresive]

16. 2 people I know received Rabies shots

The pain wasn't from the injections so much but the doctors irrigated the wounds with the vaccine. That according to the patients was excruciating. Maybe that procedure is not standard, I don't know.

[kestrel91316]

18. Wounds are not in any circumstance "irrigated" with rabies vaccine.

On Day One injectable immunoglobulin is infiltrated around the wound(s). Pretty painful from what I've been told, but it's only one time.

The followup vaccine injections are trivial.

[kestrel91316]

19. Makes ZERO sense to me. Birds are not known to transmit rabies.

http://www.nasphv.org/Documents/RabiesCompendium.pdf

I have not seen any confirmed reports of rabies in any avian species, but I do have a vague recollection of a raptor or vulture somewhere having rabies a couple of decades ago.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Apparently they've come up with a newer rabies treatment.

I had always heard how horrible rabies shots were too, but recently stumbled across something that made me look around a bit. Instead of the 20-30 horribly painful shots in the stomach I'd always heard about, the newer rabies vaccine is only 4 much less painful IM shots. (IM = intramuscular, aka you can get it in the deltoid muscle of the shoulder, for instance.)

As to why they decided she needed it for a bird attack, no idea.

[JanMichael]

3. They aren't

it's 2 shots of globulin in the muscle or near the wound (those are the painful ones- like I wrote above, kind of like the penicillin shots 30 years ago- ouch!)-- then two rabies vaccines in the deltoid muscle of the arm-

Then once a week for a month, you get a booster rabies vaccine that didn't hurt at all- took less than 10 seconds to get-

Really- it's not a big deal.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. Sounds like

different facilities are using different ways to split up the doses, or else the website I checked was slightly out of date on how they're administering it. But no matter how you slice it, it's a lot better than it used to be.

[JanMichael]

8. I think the treatment is getting more

standardized. There probably are ways to split up the dosages- but, like you wrote- either way, the treatment is NOT the horror it used to be. It's scarier to think of getting rabies than it is getting a couple of pain in the butt (or thigh- or where ever the bite is) shots-

[hlthe2b]

10. Abdominal series of injections ended decades ago.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

12. For us city folks

rabies isn't a high priority. Until the last month or so, I don't think I'd heard rabies mentioned in decades.

[JanMichael]

15. :( Yes, it is

We had a bat in the house- We are within half a mile of the center of a large city, and a nationally known university.

Bats, raccoons etc- city dwelling wildlife carries rabies. I think it's just getting more press now that the internet social forums have exploded.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

17. Oh we've still got plenty of wildlife around.

I just never hear about anyone ever getting it. And I suppose one of the vaccinations my dogs get every year or two is probably a rabies shot, come to think of it.

[kestrel91316]

21. Rabies is a significant concern here in Los Angeles due to our

perpetual AND INCREASING problem with bat rabies.

If you haven't heard about it, you aren't keeping up with public health and zoonoses. With a BSN, you should be.

http://www.nasphv.org/Documents/RabiesCompendium.pdf

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/

http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

24. Our programs tend to be more

focused locally regionally than nationally, and although we were encouraged to consider other areas, I looked more into public health issues facing Native populations rather than those facing large urban hubs...

[kestrel91316]

25. Native populations may have more rabies risk than us in the cities. It's about the

exposure to wildlife reservoirs of the virus.

[kestrel91316]

20. The "newer" rabies post-exposure protocol is now over 30 years old.

Nobody in any industrialized country has used the 21 injections of duck embryo vaccine in the abdominal musculature in decades. It is completely obsolete and has been replaced by a much shorter, cheaper, less painful, and vastly more effective human-derived vaccine.

http://www.nasphv.org/Documents/RabiesCompendium.pdf

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

23. Showing my age

and the fact that none of my nursing classes ever talked about rabies vaccines, nor did I ever talk to anyone at any of the hospitals or clinics I was in. It's just darn rare around where I am, so no one ever really talks about it.

[hobbit709]

5. Maybe it'll teach her not to get near a raptor's nest.

Last edited Thu May 29, 2014, 09:51 AM - Edit history (1)

[madokie]

11. Reminds me of something that happened to me

Over at our home place I was walking in the woods looking for mushrooms when I went under a tree that had a red tail hawk nest in it. the nest was maybe 15 feet from the ground. Anyways as I was concentrating on looking for some mushrooms the male red tail came down and took his talons and scratched my head like you would if you were scratching your head. While doing this he was also slapping my shoulders with his wings. Needless to say I got the hell out of there. I knew that the red tails had built a nest in that tree in years prior but didn't give it any thought that day. You can bet that any time I'm down in the holler now I steer clear of that oak tree. My brother was telling me the other day that they have a nest in the same tree again this year. We also have a pair of owls that nest in that holler every year too.

[Historic NY]

6. CDC website must be something they don't consult...

Birds, snakes, and fish are not mammals, so they can´t get rabies and they can´t give it to you.

http://www.cdc.gov/rabiesandkids/animals.html

[JanMichael]

7. This is a good question for Kestrel

She's a veterinarian and gave us great advice after we were exposed.

Perhaps the doctor that treated this woman thought there was a chance that the hawk had just killed a mammal with rabies, and there was the chance that it could have transferred through blood on it's talons. OR maybe he couldn't be sure her story was true, and treated her because it looked like a dog attack?

I don't know, but I do know that passing on a few shots is stupid considering the alternative. If our doc recommended that, we would have gone for the treatment- and not depended on internet information to possibly save our lives.

We had no visible bites from the bat- I questioned whether we really needed the rabies shots for about 30 seconds.

[hedgehog]

14. +1

[hlthe2b]

9. Only mammals carry rabies. So, there is something very wrong with this reporting.

FWIW, rabies post exposure treatment consists of an injection of antibody rich serum and four doses of rabies vaccine given days 0, 3, 7, and 14 given in the arm, typically, while the antibody (immuneglobulin) serum is usually infiltrated around the bite or in muscle distant from the vaccine injection site.

These are no more painful than any other vaccine. The old abdominal series of injections, to which the OP refers ended decades ago. Those, of course were more painful.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/rr/rr5902.pdf

[TreasonousBastard]

13. That's what I was thinking-- the report got it wrong.

[kestrel91316]

22. Thanks for picking up the slack for me with this!

[Warpy]

26. Birds of prey feast on vector animals

and the northeast part of the country has had epidemic rabies for decades.

I'd insist on the rabies shots. Yes, the hawk could be a carrier via fresh blood on beak or talons.