By NewsDesk  @infectiousdiseasenews

In a follow-up on a report last month of the first imported human rabies case in Japan since 2006, the Toyohashi city government said Monday the patient has died at a hospital in the central Japan city on June 13.

Image/DasWortgewand

The patient was a male in his 30s of foreign nationality who came to Japan from the Philippines in mid-February and presented  with pain in the ankle on May 11 after being bitten by a dog on the left ankle last September in the country.

According to the municipal government in Aichi Prefecture and other sources, the deceased, a resident of neighboring Shizuoka Prefecture, failed to go to see a doctor there.

Since 1957, there has been no infected indigenous with rabies in Japan; however, in 2006, two men contracted rabies in the Philippines and died upon return to Japan.

Rabies is a zoonotic infection (a disease that spreads from animals to humans) that can cause a rare but life-threatening infection of the brain and nervous system in humans. It usually results from a bite, scratch, or lick from an infected animal. The virus is estimated to kill around 59,000 people every year worldwide, most often as a result of a bite from a rabid dog in parts of Africa and Asia.