A mum-of-two has collapsed and died in front of her terrified children after being bitten by the family's pet hamster .
The woman, 38, collapsed outside a health centre near her home in Spain she was heading to with her two children , aged 17 and 11, to receive medical attention after the reported bite. An autopsy is expected to determine if the incident contributed to her death. It is not clear if the autopsy has taken place but results are not normally made public in Spain. A local court is co-ordinating an ongoing investigation into her death.
The unnamed woman, a Colombian national, fell to the ground outside the health centre in the city of Villarreal, north of Valencia on Spain's east coast, at around 10.30pm on Friday night. Local newspaper Mediterraneo reported she was heading to an A&E there after being bitten by the family rodent. She is understood to have been just a few feet from the front door when she collapsed.
The newspaper claims health workers rushed out to assist her and made attempts to resuscitate her but were sadly unable to save her life. Police cordoned off the zone before her body was taken away. National Police in Castellon, the provincial capital Villarreal forms part of, could not be reached for comment this morning. In rare cases rabies and bacterial infections can be transmitted by a bite from an infected hamster.
Owners who are bitten are advised to wash the wound to reduce the risk of any problems. There have been reports in the past of people with allergies being taken to hospital with serious breathing difficulties after being bitten by hamsters.
Back in the UK in May 2007, a man was admitted to a hospital in Redditch, Worcestershire, after reportedly going into anaphylactic shock following a bite. Paramedic Stuart Philp was quoted after the scare, which occurred when the man’s seven-year-old daughter took it out of its cage at their home near Evesham, as saying: "It was a highly unusual situation.
"We got the initial call to an allergic reaction but we didn’t realise it was from a hamster until we got there. Calls to allergic reactions are fairly common but it’s usually wasp or bee stings or sometimes people are allergic to medication."
He added: "When the crew went in the man was unconscious. He was still breathing but the situation was clearly life-threatening. He is known to be allergic to penicillin so he keeps medication in the house. He had adrenaline injections in the form of Epi-pens, which many allergy sufferers carry.
"He would usually have to take only one but he had taken three and they hadn’t had any effect. People react in different ways to different chemicals, It’s hard to say why this man reacted in this way. It’s just a case of a particular hamster and a particular man – it’s very unlucky."
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