UK woman was diagnosed with rabies after psychiatrist raised fears, inquest told
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<p>Yvonne Ford, who died after scratch from dog in Morocco, had been referred to mental health expert due to symptoms</p><p>A woman who died in the UK after contracting rabies while on holiday in Morocco was diagnosed with the disease after a psychiatrist was called in to assess her symptoms, an inquest has heard.</p><p>Yvonne Ford, 59, died in Barnsley hospital on 11 June, four months after she was scratched by a puppy in February while on a beach in the north Afri
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UK woman was diagnosed with rabies after psychiatrist raised fears, inquest told Yvonne Ford, who died after scratch from dog in Morocco, had been referred to mental health expert due to symptoms A woman who died in the UK after contracting rabies while on holiday in Morocco was diagnosed with the disease after a psychiatrist was called in to assess her symptoms, an inquest has heard. Yvonne Ford, 59, died in Barnsley hospital on 11 June, four months after she was scratched by a puppy in February while on a beach in the north African country. A jury at Sheffield coroner’s court was informed on Tuesday that Ford, a Barnsley native, had decided against seeking medical treatment as she considered it to be minor injury, and had simply cleaned it with a wet wipe. It wasn’t until Ford and her family returned to the UK that she began to exhibit symptoms, which were diagnosed as rabies only after she was referred to the mental health facility at Barnsley hospital. Alexander Burns, the psychiatrist who assessed Ford, told the jury that he had been asked to see her as his colleagues at the hospital had had difficulty diagnosing her, and believed that her symptoms may have suggested a mental health problem. Rabies, a virus transmitted through saliva that causes brain inflammation, can lead to symptoms such as extreme anxiety, hallucinations and dizziness, as well as fatigue, problems consuming water and a shutdown of the central nervous system. Burns said that he had initially suspected that Ford was suffering from Lyme disease, caused by tick bites, before being informed by her husband of the dog scratch in Morocco. He also said that the short stay unit that had been looking after Ford had been unaware of the scratch. After learning of the scratch, Burns informed the court that he became “concerned that the diagnosis may be rabies, in the context of … the various neurological symptoms” and sought further expertise into the disease, as he had never come across it before in his...
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