Scientists from the United States say early investigations into the deaths of a number of tribal Indians in northeastern Venezuela suggest that they may have been infected by a type of rabies carried by bats.
The outbreak has killed as many as 38 Warao Indians since June 2007, 16 of those have died since June this year, including 8 children from one village.
The Warao Indians live on the Orinoco River Delta, a river wider than the Mississippi; they live a relatively primitive lifestyle in huts on stilts which have thatched roofs and travel by dugout canoe. The Warao language is of South American origin and is spoken by 20,000 people in Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname and is not known to be related to any other South American language.
According to indigenous leaders and researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, the symptoms which include fever, body pains, tingling in the feet followed by progressive paralysis are similar to rabies.
Though laboratory tests have yet to confirm the outbreak is indeed rabies, experts say it is highly likely and the disease was almost certainly carried by vampire bats whose colony had been disturbed by mining, logging or damming projects.
Anthropologist Charles Briggs and his wife public health specialist Dr. Clara Mantini-Briggs say the victims also had an extreme fear of water, suffered convulsions and grew rigid before death.
The two scientists drew attention to the unusual case and are known for their work on a cholera outbreak that killed 500 people in Venezuela in the early 1990s and have worked with the Warao for a number of years.
A research trip at the invitation of indigenous leaders to investigate the outbreak, took the two through 30 villages in the delta.
Dr. Mantini-Briggs says she was surprised to find that many Warao villages had acquired cats and they were told it was because there were too many bats that were biting the children.