Cobras biting babies in KZN
A doctor has treated 164 patients, most of whom were children, who were bitten by snakes in KZN's deep rural areas as they slept on floors.
|||Durban - A young Durban doctor has treated 164 patients over a four month period, most of whom were children, who were bitten by snakes in the deep rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal as they slept on floors at night.
A three-year-old girl bitten at least three times on her face, and a three-month-old baby have been among patients Mark Wagener, who is based at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, has treated.
“The majority of snake bites are from the Mozambique spitting cobra - the mfezi,” Wagener said.
Wagener has recently completed a study of the cases. He took up the study after noticing many children were being admitted for snake bites, during his days as an intern at Empangeni’s Ngwelezana Hospital.
“I wanted to get some data on it,” he said. The results showed 93 percent of snakes that had struck his patients had been identified as Mozambique spitting cobras.
“Individual descriptions can be unrealistic, but the bites were very typical,” he said.
Unlike mambas, Cape cobras and forest cobras, Mozambique spitting cobras are cytotoxic. When they bite and inject venom, they damage body cells, first causing swelling and later tissue destruction, Wagener explained.
More than half the patients were under 10 years old and 15 percent were between 10 and 15, he said.
Untreated bites could cause severe stiffness in the area of the bite, especially among children. This could cause limbs to not function and prevent victims from performing jobs, he said.
“The potential socio-economic burden is massive.”
Wagener said rural children who were the most vulnerable were also a population group without a voice.
“There are very few bites in high density areas like Durban,” he said.
Most occurred in the uMkhanyakude District, the northern coastal area of the province, which stretches from Manguzi to Hlabisa and Hluhluwe. Also with high incidences were the Zululand region, which includes Ulundi and the uThungulu region, which includes Empangeni.
Wagener speculated that children were vulnerable in deep rural homes because they probably slept on the floor and moved a lot as they slept.
“Maybe the snakes pull up near them for warmth, or they’re inquisitive and a sudden movement of the child could cause it to strike.”
He said Mozambique spitting cobras hunted at night and were known to enter homes.
“Their bites can cause the victims severe tissue destruction with wounds rupturing the skin sometimes a distance from the bite mark but destroying tissue between the two points, underneath the skin.”
Treatment often requires numerous medical staff: a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, nurses, a doctor and a surgeon.
It typically involved removing damaged tissue, skin grafts and therapy to get patients to be able to once again use affected body parts, such as their hands, limbs, toes and fingers.
Preventative measures would be for children to sleep in beds, not the floor, with their parents if necessary, and wrapped in blankets, or a sheet if it was hot.
Most bites were in the hot, summer months.
Independent on Saturday