She suffered from several hundred bites, and contracted rabies. The father files a complaint against his landlord.
The story reported by The voice of the North is worthy of a horror movie. A 14-year-old girl, Samantha, was discovered by her father on Saturday morning in her bedroom on the ground floor of the house, lying in a pool of blood. The teenager, multiple handicapped, had been devoured by rats during her sleep.
“There was blood everywhere,” explains the father on a daily basis. I thought of a burglary gone wrong. She was bleeding from her ears, I thought she had a brain hemorrhage. I had the fright of my life. “
In total, Samantha has 225 wounds all over her body, according to a police source from theAFP. His fingertips were completely nibbled. But she’s alive.
Unsanitary living conditions
The father decided to file a complaint against the landlord of the house and against the city of Roubaix, for “accommodation conditions contrary to human dignity”, announced the Lille prosecutor’s office.
He denounces the insalubrity of the neighborhood, where trash cans are piling up, thus attracting rats. However, he had, on several occasions since 2012, reported the living conditions to various services. “The city’s hygiene department came twice. Nothing has changed, he is indignant. It is not because we are at the RSA, that we live in a courtyard in Roubaix, that we should be treated like animals ”.
The girl has rage
The teenager is struggling to recover from her injuries. She had a series of vaccines, including one against rabies. His tests, sent to the Institut Pasteur, came back positive, according to his father.
Since the eradication of rabies in foxes in Europe, cases of detection of the virus are extremely rare. Occasionally dogs, bats, or other wildlife can become infected, and surveillance is in place. Rats can also be carriers.
In humans, no case had been identified between 2001 and 2008. But since then, French people have been regularly infected following bites from carrier animals, most of the time imported from abroad.
The virus is spread to humans through scratches, bites, or even simply licking an area of damaged skin or a mucous membrane.
Act before symptoms
The risk is not trivial. Rabies still kills tens of thousands of people a year around the world. It is caused by a virus found in the saliva of animals.
The virus affects the nervous system. “After a few days to a few months of incubation most often, the affected individual develops an array of encephalitis, explains the Institut Pasteur. The symptomatic phase often begins with dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) and various neuropsychiatric disorders, including anxiety and agitation. “Once the symptoms are declared, the outcome is, with a few extremely rare exceptions, always fatal, in a few hours to a few days.
In the event of exposure, the treatment consists primarily of cleaning the wounds. Then a vaccination is prescribed, possibly accompanied by specific serotherapy. The patient undergoes 4 to 5 injections in a month.
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