Real Stories.
Real Impact.

In September 2004, a 15-year-old girl named Jeanna Giese was scratched by a bat during a church service in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The wound was tiny. Nobody worried. She never received a rabies vaccine.

About a month later, Jeanna developed a slight tremor in her left hand. Then difficulty walking. Then slurred speech. By the time her parents rushed her to the hospital, doctors were baffled — no fever, no obvious infection. Her condition deteriorated rapidly.

Finally, a spinal fluid test confirmed what the medical team feared: rabies. Fully symptomatic. At that stage, survival had never once been recorded in medical history.

Her doctors at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin made a decision that had never been tried before. They placed Jeanna in a medically induced coma — shutting down her brain to give her immune system a chance to fight. This became known as the Milwaukee Protocol.

After 31 days in hospital — and months of rehabilitation — Jeanna Giese walked out alive. She became the first person in recorded history to survive clinical rabies without a pre- or post-exposure vaccine.

Jeanna later graduated from university, married, and had three children. She now speaks publicly about her experience — and about the bat scratch that almost no one noticed.