Rabies

MORGANTON, Ga. — Health officials say four people in northwest Georgia have been exposed to rabies by a pet llama.

An untreated rabies infection is usually seen as a death sentence. But a new study by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta suggests that may be wrong. In two villages in the Amazon, researchers found that 10% of people tested appeared to have survived an infection with the virus.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- Had Army Spc. Kevin Shumaker died from a mortar blast or insurgent fire while serving in Afghanistan, that would be devastating but fathomable.

Instead, the decorated 24-year-old from Livermore, Calif., was dealt a fatal blow in January while breaking up, of all things, a dogfight at his remote Afghanistan base.

Eight months after a stray dog bit his hand, Shumaker died from rabies in a New York hospital, the only death this year in the United States from the rare and very treatable disease.

LOS ANGELES -- The first reported case of human rabies linked to a vampire bat was reported Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The case, which happened about a year ago, resulted in the death of a 19-year-old man from Mexico.

In the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the case went down this way: The man's mother said her son had been bitten on the heel of his left foot while he was sleeping. The man, who has living in Michoacan, Mexico, apparently never reported the bite or was treated for it. Ten days later he traveled to Louisiana to work at a sugarcane plantation, where after one day of work he got medical help for a variety of symptoms, including fatigue, pain in his left shoulder and numbness in his left hand.