The latest issue of the WHO Rabies Bulletin Europe is available. The reported rabies cases of the 2nd quarter 2012 are presented in tables. Interestingly, among the 9 bat rabies cases reported is a second case of Bokeloh Bat Lyssavirus (BBLV), this time detected in a Natterer’s bat in France. Also, in Spain a Miniopterus schreibersii bat tested positive and preliminary results by the team of Juan Echevarria suggest that this virus represents yet another novel lyssavirus named Lleida bat lyssavirus (LLBLV). The scientific paper(s) on this novel virus will be much appreciated.

The first miscellaneous article provides first-hand information on the rabies situation in Jordan. The report was prepared following a workshop on rabies prevention and control in Amman funded by the European Union. Those who wanted to make use of the sequences available on NCBI sequence database may have experienced problems as often several sequence entries for an individual virus exist, caused by duplication of data by different submitting laboratories and limited or absent submission details, resulting in extensive searches of the literature to collate the relevant data. The second article introduces a newly developed, easily searchable, on-line sequence database for lyssaviruses, which combines all necessary information on the virus, the sequence and further laboratory information.