Let's not get in a froth about la rage

"The bats could be interesting for the UK," said Professor Pierre Sureau, when I met him a decade ago at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. The professor made his prophetic statement with a distinct glint in his eye. He knew then Britain's rabies defences were threatened by bats.

The bat-man at the Ministry of Agriculture knew it too. Surrounded by bats in bottles, bats pinned on boards, bats on posters, he described Britain's multi-million pound programme of anti-rabies controls, and spoke of the need to monitor the passage of infected animals through the soon- to-be- built Channel tunnel.

But he admitted there was no way of stopping an infected bat flying across the Channel. "You can't be sure. They do get blown of course," he said.

Europeans have always laughed at Britain's draconian anti-rabies regulations, and Britain's rabies obsession has provided many a Continental with a metaphor for Britain's fear and loathing of Europe. Yesterday, when they heard Britain had identified a rabid bat, European Commission officials could not resist a laugh at Britain's expense. "Rabies in Britain? I know there's been a lot of frothing in the mouth in the Commons of late," said one official, who normally fields questions on the beef ban.

Ever since Fritz, a black and white terrier, went mad in Camberley, Surrey, in 1969, sparking the first rabies emergency for 50 years, Britain has insisted on six month quarantine for all pets arriving in Britain as well as instant vaccination on arrival. Yet, the fact is that no human rabies has been transmitted in Britain since 1902.

Rabies is virtually eradicated in animals in Western Europe, thanks to concerted vaccination programmes. Nobody has died from the disease within the European Union for 22 years. Yet all around the British coast cats and dogs must linger in quarantine, while their owners pine away, spending vast amounts on the kennels. The British rules have caused havoc for the EU's regulations on free movement.

Rabies has had a strong political symbolism in Britain and its appearance just at the time when the beef of Old England is being regarded on the Continent as a danger is a remarkable coincidence. British ministers have often cited rabies as the prime reason for refusing to agree on European proposals for relaxing frontier checks.

When plans were laid for building the Channel tunnel, Britain insisted on numerous high-tech installations to ensure that rabid dogs or foxes did not slip across. Yet now, our defenses have been punctured by a single bat. Rabies symptoms in a human are horrendous, and include paralysis and hydrophobia (fear of water). A medical description I came across read: "The patient picks up a cup to drink, but even before the liquid has reached his lips his arm shakes and his body is contorted with violent spasms . . . Cries of alarm may be distorted and the voice begins to sound like a bark."

But the fact is that although rabies does still kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, the deaths are almost all in Asia, Africa and South America. Nobody on the continent of Europe wants rabies in their midst either - which is why our European partners have launched their eradication programmes.

The disease has been pushed back on the Continent by killing stray dogs and by immunisation with a vaccine that was invented by Louis Pasteur in Paris in 1882. Fears that rabies might be on the march rose in Europe in the 1960s when the number of foxes escalated. Improved vaccination schemes have done the trick. According to the Commission the number of cases of rabies in animals in EU member states was reduced by 70 per cent between 1990 and 1994. Possible spread of the disease from Eastern Europe, after the end of the Cold War, has been averted by stringent border monitoring and special vaccination along the borders.

Bats were identified as possible rabies carries several years ago, and the Commission is now examining ways of controlling bat rabies too.