Campfire Ranger
Joined: Oct 2004
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The true nature of my despair is my guaranteed death within the next 4 hours from the Coronavirus... or a king cobra strike... and yet you mock my fear
Lack of anti-venom in rural areas and difficulty accessing health centres are among a number of factor contributing to 46,000 deaths every year.
May 16, 2016
NEW DELHI // Chirag Roy set off for the nearby Indian village of Kollara after receiving a call that fateful morning.
A spectacled cobra had been spotted in the neighbouring village, one kilometre away. Would he be able to come immediately?
As the resident naturalist at Svasara Resorts, in the Tadoba Tiger Reserve in eastern Maharashtra, Roy had wanted to rescue the snake. But that morning on March 1, he was bitten by the cobra and died on the way to hospital.
“The villagers had a tendency to kill any snake they saw,” said Ratika Sinha, Svasara’s executive director, adding that Roy often received such phone calls. “He was a very passionate herpetologist, and he tried to rescue the snakes instead.”
Roughly 46,000 people die of snakebites in India every year, according to the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, accounting for nearly half of the 100,000 annual snakebite deaths the world over.
But most of these deaths are entirely avoidable, said Gerry Martin, a Bengaluru-based conservationist who works to reduce snakebite mortality.
A colleague had followed Roy that day, leaving Svasara minutes later after assembling a kit to rescue the snake. By the time he reached Kollara, Roy had been bitten by the cobra.
He was not bleeding, but he knew what had happened. “I need to go to a hospital,” Roy told his colleague.
The nearest government hospital was 14 kilometres away, and the doctors there failed to see the urgency of Roy’s condition. By the time he was given a shot of anti-venom, it was clear he needed further medical attention as he could not breathe and was vomiting.
An ambulance was parked at the hospital but its attendants were nowhere to be found.
Another van was commandeered, but the journey to the city of Nagpur took two hours. Roy died on the way, at the age of 30.
Roy’s death was quite unusual, Mr Martin said.
“Snakebite in this country doesn’t usually affect people of the middle and upper middle class. It’s a poor man’s affliction, it’s a farmer’s affliction.”
The infrastructure to deal quickly and effectively with snakebites is often inadequate in rural areas. Roads to the nearest hospital may be bad or non-existent, so ambulances may struggle to get victims to health centres. In remote hospitals, stocks of anti-venom can run low.
But the real problem, Mr Martin said, is a lack of awareness.
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