N.B. children treated after possible exposure to rabies; risk thought to be low

TORONTO – Two children in southern New Brunswick are receiving post-exposure treatment for rabies after their family’s dogs had contact with a rabid raccoon.

The children are reported to have shared popsicles with the dogs after the dogs spent some time chasing the raccoon around the family’s backyard.

The raccoon was behaving oddly and was killed and buried.

Later its body was dug up and the provincial veterinary laboratory sent the animal’s brain to Ottawa, where testing at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s rabies laboratory confirmed the animal had rabies.

The unidentified family lives in St. Stephen, a southwestern New Brunswick town on the border with Maine.

New Brunswick’s chief medical officer of health says the risk that the children were exposed to the virus is low, but because rabies is so lethal people don’t take chances.

Dr. Eilish Cleary says post-exposure treatment, when given early enough, is very effective at preventing infection.

Human rabies cases in Canada are rare, with only three so far reported this century, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. They occurred in Quebec in 2000, British Columbia in 2003 and Alberta in 2007.

Ontario also diagnosed a case of rabies in 2012, but the man had been living in the Caribbean and was infected there.

From 1924 to 2009, 24 Canadians in six provinces died from rabies.