Moroccan Man’s Rabies Death Sparks Legal Battle with Spanish Health Service

The Moroccan A.E.M.H., 56 years old, died four months after being bitten by a cat during his vacation in Tangier. The Basque health service has rejected the request of his relatives who are claiming compensation for delay in treatment, stating that the patient had received "adequate care" and had not received anti-rabies treatment in Morocco because he had "disappeared" after the first consultation.

His relatives argue that the doctors "did not properly evaluate his symptoms and clinical condition, which delayed the diagnosis and treatment". "It was a cat bite in Morocco, a country where rabies is endemic. Osakidetza should have applied the protocol for these cases, but they did not," says a spokesman for the family, stressing that the doctors did not carry out the specific analysis that would have allowed them to know about the viral infection in time and to urgently adopt the appropriate protective measures.

"Furthermore, if they already suspected that there was a possibility that he had been infected with rabies, he was a danger to public health, there was a risk that he would infect other people, they should have done everything possible to locate him, even call the Ertzaintza and notify the court," adds the family spokesman.

For the Basque health service, since "the cat bite was evaluated at the Tangier hospital as an incident without risk of rabies", its agents did not "insist on locating the patient". And to add: "The doctors in Morocco did not evaluate the bite data and this should have been done. But this had no consequence on the prognosis, given that the disease is fatal".

"There was a delay in the diagnosis that prevented him from being treated in time and his environment was put at risk due to the risk of contagion," say the relatives who assure that they will continue their fight to prove that the Moroccan was the victim of "a medical error".

In the Basque Country, a Moroccan woman died in 2014 in a Madrid hospital from a viral rabies infection. She had been bitten on the foot by a rabid dog during a trip to her country of origin.