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Friday, December 4, 2009

Help wanted locating child attacked by coyote in Florida

Health officials in Florida and Kansas are hoping to identify a child who may be in need of rabies treatment.

The Florida Department of Health alerted the Kansas Department of Health and Environment about the child, who was attacked by a coyote at a Florida campground in mid-November.

Florida health officials believe the youth may have a connection to the Wichita area, and may not have received treatment yet.

“Rabies is completely preventable with a series of vaccinations and we want to make sure that this child receives the appropriate treatment,” said Dr. Ingrid Garrison, Kansas State Public Health Veterinarian. “It is important that the child see a health care provider and start the vaccinations as soon as possible.”

Anyone with information is urged to contact KDHE at 1-877-427-7317.

5 comments:

Karen and Al said...

Is that all there is to the article? Where was she at when attacked? Any more details?

Ken said...

I hope this child is ok and has been treated with the vaccine. Rabies is not a joking matter. Its rare for a coyote to come that close to humans. Makes me wonder where were the childs parents during this attack ?

Anonymous said...

If this was in a campground, there should be registration information available. As Karen said this is very skimpy on details.

Anonymous said...

What campground? Why wasn't the incident reported and the family's information recorded. This sounds totally irresponsible on the part of the campground. Why hasn't this reached national news? This is almost as bad as an Amber Alert!

Michelle Dilks said...

Hi Karen and Ken,
Chuck posted this article from a public appeal press release with no further detail. I did however dig around and was able to piece together quite a few details from various sources, too many to share here so I made a follow up post. See my Dec 6 post, "Help wanted finding child attacked by coyote in Florida, part 2".