Four people received donated organs from a man unknowingly infected with rabies, leading to a rare human death more than a year later that has authorities scrambling to treat the other three patients, federal health officials said Friday.
The man who died lived in Maryland and had received a kidney. The recipients of the donor's other kidney, heart and liver are getting anti-rabies shots, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a news release Friday. Those patients live in Florida, Georgia and Illinois.
The donor died in Florida in 2011 after moving there from North Carolina.
The CDC said it's working with public health officials and medical facilities in all five states to identify people who were in close contact with the donor or the four organ recipients. Those people might also need treatment, the agency said.