Top medic urges caution after Barnsley woman’s rabies death

Rabies was very rare in the UK but people should not “take for granted how safe we are”, a top medic has warned following the death of a woman from the virus.

Yvonne Ford, 59, from Barnsley, died in hospital in Sheffield on 11 June after being scratched while stroking a puppy during a holiday to Morocco in February.

Her daughter, Robyn Thomson, said in a Facebook post that her mum had started experiencing symptoms two weeks ago, which began with a headache and eventually saw her unable to walk, talk, sleep or swallow.

Prof Andrew Lee, from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said it was vital that people planning to travel abroad should seek health advice and “get all their jabs in”.

Mrs Ford had light contact with the stray dog while on holiday in February in the North African country, according to her family.

She was diagnosed with rabies at Barnsley Hospital after returning to the UK, and was later transferred to Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital where she died last week.

Prof Lee told the BBC that the UK itself had been “rabies-free since the early part of the 20th Century”.

“We’ve not got it in our wild or domestic animals – with the exception of a few bat species, but that’s really, really rare – and the cases we’ve had in the UK have been acquired abroad,” he said.

He explained that once someone had contracted the virus, it could take a few months for the symptoms to emerge.

If people were bitten, scratched or licked by an animal with rabies while abroad, they should “try and wash the wound out as soon as you can and get medical treatment as soon as you can”, Prof Lee urged.

“If you’ve had early treatment then generally the chances are pretty good that you will recover, but if you leave it too late and the disease sets in then it attacks nerves and then the brain and it can’t be cured once it gets to that stage.

“If people don’t get treatment early, and especially if they’re not vaccinated, once the disease sets in there’s little our medical colleagues can do and unfortunately it becomes fatal.”

Prof Lee urged everyone planning to go abroad on holiday to “make sure you get your travel advice and get all the right vaccines and protect yourselves and your loved ones”.

“If there is one message, it is that here in the UK we take for granted how safe we are from infectious disease, but we forget that outside the UK in many countries some of these diseases are much more common, like rabies,” he said.

“So it’s important that people get travel health advice before they go abroad and make sure they get all their jabs in.”

Prof Lee added that people should also “have your wits about you and just avoid the animals”, particularly in countries where the risk of rabies is much higher, such as parts of Africa and Asia.

Six cases of human rabies connected to animal exposure abroad were reported in the UK between 2000 and 2024.