A healthy, immunocompetent 11-year-old Canadian boy passed away in 2024 due to a rare condition that takes fewer than 10 lives in the USA each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The tragedy occurred a little over a month after a bat seemingly bit the child during a vacation.
His passing was recently discussed in a Canadian Medical Association Journal case study by doctors from the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba, Canada, published on June 29, 2026.
The article highlighted that the boy’s demise could have been prevented had he been accurately diagnosed and subjected to the appropriate treatment sooner.
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An 11-year-old boy was repeatedly misdiagnosed after falling ill from contact with a bat
In 2024, during a visit to a cottage in Ontario with his family, the boy, who wasn’t named in the report, woke to find a bat sitting on his face, right over his nose and mouth.
He swatted at it, and his father then caught the winged mammal in a cooking pot and released it outside.
Image credits: Todd Cravens/Unsplash (not an actual photo)
As the child had no visible bite marks on his face or body and felt fine afterward, the parents did not seek immediate medical attention.
However, 19 days later, the child began to experience progressive tingling and numbness on the right side of his face, followed by swelling and loss of appetite.
This time, the parents reported the bat incident to the hospital, and the local public health authority was notified. Still, the boy was discharged after being treated for a suspected case of herpes gingivostomatitis, where the patient develops sores in and around the lips.
It did not help.
The child was diagnosed with rabies, a fatal disease, too late
Image credits: Frida Lannerström/Unsplash (not an actual photo)
By the next morning, the boy had to return to the ER with reduced sensation in his face and slurred speech, and later developed hallucinations while waiting at the hospital.
By evening, his condition had rapidly worsened, with the onset of multiple nervous issues.
At this point, the doctors suspected that the child might have contracted rabies from the bat that sat on his face.
A PCR test confirmed a rabies diagnosis on the fourth day of his admission, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency also identified a bat rabies variant in his blood.
But it was too late.
Image credits: Cottonbro Studio/Pexels (not an actual photo)
“The patient’s hospital course was complicated by autonomic dysfunction, ventilator-associated pneumonia, and progressive neurologic decline,” the study said. “By day 5 of admission, his brainstem reflexes were absent.”
Despite the best efforts of the medical professionals, the boy succumbed to the disease on his 17th day in the hospital.
Rabies causes fewer than 10 fatalities each year in the US
Image credits: Getty Images/Unsplash (not an actual photo)