School's pet bat tests positive for rabies

Catching a bat in a school basement and keeping it as a classroom pet is a great way to learn — about rabies.

Two staff members at Trinity Lutheran School are getting a weekslong series of rabies shots after a bat kept in a locked terrarium tested positive for the disease.

On May 9, seventh- and eighth-grade teacher Steve Coniglio used a stick and a bucket to capture the bat, which died two days later.

The bat had been displayed in classrooms and students gave it crickets, but Susan Tucker, head teacher at the central Wyoming school, said Coniglio made sure students did not handle the animal.

State and county health officials on Tuesday interviewed all 95 staff members and students at the school and decided that Coniglio and a teaching assistant who cleaned the cage after the bat died needed to be treated as a precaution, said Marty Stensaas, manager for Fremont County Public Health Nursing...

--USA Today

Flagellation ritual exposes Filipinos to rabies

More than a hundred men in the Philippines may have contracted rabies after taking part in a self-flagellation ritual to mark Good Friday, doctors and local authorities said on Thursday.

A health alert was issued after a man who took part in the traditional ceremony – where participants slash their backs with knifes before flaying themselves with bamboo whips – died from the virus on 11 April.

Mario Morales, the mayor of Mabalacat in Pampanga province north of Manila, told local media that Eduardo Sese may have contaminated up to 100 people who shared knives to cut themselves. He was bitten by an infected dog in February 2007.

The government doctor in Pampanga, Maria Clara Aquino, said vaccines had been given to 103 people who could have been exposed...

--New Scientist