Rabies transmission by vampire bats (Pawan)
Transmisión de la rabia por murciélagos vampiro (Pawan)
- Date
- 1931-1936 · confidence high
- Place
- Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
- Credited to
- Joseph Lennox Pawan, Trinidadian bacteriologist
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Pawan showed in 1931 that vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) could carry the rabies virus without falling ill and transmit it to cattle and people. It changed the understanding of rabies in tropical America, where the bat is a key reservoir.
Pawan identified the fact in 1931 after observing an apparently healthy bat carrying Negri bodies; his work confirmed transmission by bite in 1936. The paralytic rabies epidemic in Trinidad had been recorded since 1925.
What it led to
- bat-control and cattle-vaccination programmes in Latin America
- the concept of an asymptomatic reservoir in rabies epidemiology
- research on wildlife zoonoses