A five-year-old girl undergoing treatment for rabies died due to the infection in a Kozhikode hospital despite receiving the preventive vaccination. According to news reports, Ziya Faris was attacked by a stray dog in March when she had gone out to buy chocolates and suffered severe injuries on her forehead and legs.

Ziya’s parents had taken her to a local clinic initially, from where she was shifted to the government hospital where she received the intradermal rabies vaccine. Even though initially she was believed to have been recovering, Ziya later developed a high fever and tested positive for rabies.

According to doctors, despite following all protocols, she may have had post-exposure prophylaxis. Experts believe knowledge gaps in wound assessment may have caused her infection to spread to the brain. Also, the vaccine may have proved to be ineffective because the injuries above the neck were extremely deep and severe.

However, the Kerala State Health Department has said it will conduct a detailed analysis later.

Rabies virus, or RABV, is transmitted through direct contact, like broken skin or mucous membranes in your eyes, nose, or mouth, with saliva, brain, or nervous system tissue from an infected animal. Rabies can be fatal but preventable. It spreads to people and pets if they are bitten or scratched by a rabid animal.

Doctors say the rabies virus gets into your body when the saliva of an infected animal gets into an open wound - usually from a bite. It then moves very slowly along nerves into your central nervous system, and when it reaches your brain, the damage causes neurological symptoms.

From there, rabies leads to coma and death.

Rabies moves from an infected wound to your brain over time. Experts say there are many phases that most people go through, which include incubation, the prodromal phase, the acute neurologic phase, and coma. The rabies virus spends days to weeks in your body before it gets into your nervous system, and you may not show any signs or symptoms during the incubation period.

However, the prodromal phase begins when the virus enters your nervous system. Your immune system tries to fight back, causing flu-like symptoms. Also, nerve damage may lead to tingling, pain, or numbness where you are bitten, which lasts two to ten days. In the acute neurologic phase, viruses begin to damage your brain and spinal cord, causing paralysis to progress from the bite wound to the rest of the body. Many people then enter a coma in the final stages of a rabies infection, which eventually leads to death.

There are usually no symptoms of rabies for several weeks after it enters your body. However, when it makes it to your central nervous system, you experience flu-like symptoms. A few of these include:

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