When snakes hit, lives break

On June 15, 2015, the life of Chepchirchir Kiplagat, four years old, changed forever. Bitten by a snake while she was sleeping, she definitely lost the use of the right side of her body.

Sleeping next to her on a mattress on the floor of their modest mud-walled home, Schpchirchir's two-year-old sister, Scholar, was also bitten.

She did not survive.

"It was hard to tell what had happened because the children were crying in pain," said their father, Jackson Chepkui, a 39-year-old breeder, told AFP at his home in the tiny village of Umbria. Embosos, in western Kenya, in Baringo County.

"We saw two bloodstains on his wrist (Chepchirchir), so we were able to conclude that they had been bitten by a snake."

While the little scholar was no longer breathing, Chepkui hurried to save his surviving daughter.

Embosos has no clinic, and the frantic father has struggled to find a motorcycle taxi to take them to the nearest town: Marigat, about 30 kilometers away.

They finally arrived around 1 am – about five hours after the child was bitten – to find that the clinic had no antivenom.

They went back to the town of Kabarnet, 40 km away, again to find no reserve of serum that would save the life.

Finally, Chepchirchir was transported at 5 am in a hospital in Eldoret, located 90 km.

The girl was hospitalized for two months and suffered permanent damage. Today, she needs a wheelchair that her family can not afford.

Each year, snakes bite about 5.4 million people worldwide, 2.7 million of whom are "sleepy" – when the animal transfers its poison through its fangs.

This figure is probably a vast underestimate because of underreporting and uneven record keeping, officials said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 81,000 to 38,000 people die from snakebites each year, while approximately 400,000 survivors suffer from permanent disabilities and deafness. other adverse consequences.

Snake venom can cause paralysis with stopping breathing, bleeding disorders that can lead to fatal hemorrhage, irreversible renal failure and tissue damage that can lead to permanent disability and loss of limb.

Most snake bite victims live in the tropical and poorest regions of the world, and children are more affected because of their smaller body size.

This one does not bite

The fate of victims like Chepchirchir and her younger sister is preventable, said Royjan Taylor, director of the Bio-Ken poisonous snake center in Watamu on the Kenyan coast.

Even simple barriers such as mosquito nets around the beds can repel creepy reptiles, while easy access to qualified medical personnel and species-specific antivenoms can save thousands of lives.

It is difficult to find figures on the availability of antivenoms today, but a report by Nick Brown on the Global Snakebite Initiative a few years ago estimated that it could only be 2.5% of what is needed, the majority of African countries not yet having affordable antivenom at all.

A recent study of more than 100 clinics in Kilifi County, southern Kenya, found that almost 90% of the staff had no training in the treatment of snake bites.

"Because (a snake bite) can not be transmitted (like a disease), people tend not to look at it seriously, but we see so many snake bites, we see so much suffering because people lose members, they lose a leg "something as random as" walking on a snake, "Taylor said.

During an AFP visit, the Bio-Ken Center receives a call on a dedicated telephone line that immediately puts the team in action: a snake has been spotted.

Emmanuel, 23, is waiting for the call, machete in hand, to the place where he saw the reptile for the last time while he was locking his goat in his pen.

Moments later, Taylor and a colleague each take one end of the snake using long pliers and, with a choreographed swoop, place it in a special box.

Today's find: an African puff adder of the same type as Chepchirchir and Scholar.

"This one was well hidden" under piles of dead leaves, Taylor said. "At least, this snake will not bite anyone here."

Captured snakes are released in national parks, away from villages and populated cities. The poison of some is extracted for use in the production of antivenom.

Neglected

Kenya has some of the deadliest snakes in the world, including green and black mambas and spitting cobras.

And as in other poor rural areas of Africa, Latin America and Asia, poisonous snakes pose a risk to public health, which experts say has been neglected for too long.

Things can finally change.

On February 21, a dedicated task force set up by the UN's public health body unveiled a strategy to halve the number of snake bite deaths by the time 2030.

In its report, the group criticizes policy makers and drug developers for turning a blind eye to the problem.

"Like many diseases of poverty, snake bites have not been successful in attracting the inclusion and investment needed in public health policies …" , say the authors.

"This is largely due to the demographics of the affected populations and their lack of political voice."

The task force plan calls for the establishment of 500,000 antivenom treatments available in sub – Saharan Africa annually by 2024, reaching three million per year globally by 2030.

WHO will work to stimulate serum production, improve regulatory control and reinvigorate the market by ensuring that safe and effective products are available, the report says.