The Full Story
Snakebite Survivors, Victims, and Families
We wanted to share with you some of the stories of the snakebite survivors and the families of the victims we have worked with over the past year. Some of these are stories of victory, while others have a sad ending. But these stories will help you understand what these people go through during and after a snakebite envenomation.
Pili
While sleeping just before 6 am, nine year old Pili felt a sharp pain on the hand. She assumed that she was bitten by a scorpion. She immediately woke her siblings, sharing the same room and asked them to accompany her to their neighbor's house just about 100 m from their house to go borrow some herbs that she would rub on the bite area to ease the pain.
On reaching there, the neighbor asked them if they killed the scorpion and whether they had informed their father who was sleeping in a different room of the house. They asked for a headlight/torch to go look for the scorpion. It is at this point that they went back and saw the snake on the bed. All this time the pain was building up....the brother started screaming that his sister has been bitten by a snake. This is where the father heard the noise and woke and the neighbor came also. The father entered the room and slashed the snake which was now slithering under the bed.
The neighbor tied up the hand just above the bite site to prevent the venom from spreading. They called a boda boda (motorcycle) to come bring the child to the hospital. On arriving at the nearest medical facility and being a Sunday, they were informed there's no antivenom so they should proceed to another health facility. They arrived at another hospital at 8am, but by 4 pm nothing had happened so someone called the County Executive Committee Member for health after noticing some negligence and called the hospital administrator to ask about the case. The hospital admin finally brought the antivenom to be administered at 4pm.
Pili spent the next month in the hospital, getting blood transfusions and wound care every other day. The wound continued to heal and Pili was soon being released from the hospital to go to her aunt's house, where she would continue to get the wound cleaned and bandages changed. every other day. When it came time to decide whether she needed a skin graft, the doctors decided that the wound was healing well enough on its own and she would not need surgery!
Joseph
This is the story of Joseph, a little boy of 10 years who was bitten on the foot by a puff adder, a deadly venomous snake which is common in Africa. He was treated with antivenom at a couple of hospitals, but he had a reaction to one of the antivenoms and his legs swelled up all the way to his groins. The doctors had to do a surgery called fasciotomy to relieve the pressure from the swelling and drain the pus. The scars from this surgery and snakebite remain with him to this day and cause him a great deal of pain. Unfortunately, Joseph’s family is very poor, and they did not have the money to continue getting Joseph the proper treatment. The wound got infected and he needed proper treatment and medication - if the wound was not treated, Joseph could end up losing his limb due to infection. Due to some donations from wonderful people, Joseph was able to get the wound cleaned out and a broken bone removed. He continues to get the wound cleaned every couple of days at the local dispensary, but has to wait three months to get the plastic surgery he needs to repair his foot.
Jeremiah
One day, a man named Jeremiah wandered over to Lea's house in search of some pain medications for a wound on his feet. He had heard that Lea dealt with snakes and snakebite, and wanted to see if she could help him. Jeremiah told Lea that he had been cutting down maize (corn) on a farm in 2018, and as he did, he felt like his foot was suddenly slashed or cut. He looked at his leg and had a 1.5 cm cut in the location that later became an open wound. He experienced lots of pain and swelling. He tried to get some treatment for the wound in 2020, but because of the cost of getting the wound treated and cleaned properly, he failed to do it. Now there is a wound where the bite occurred, and a much larger wound on the opposite side. The dead flesh has turned black and is peeling off, and the wound stinks like rotten meat. This is a pretty sure sign that he now has gangrene in that area. If you press on the flesh near the wound it is "mushy" inside and there is a fluid discharge. Do we know for sure this was a snakebite? No, because he never saw the snake. But it sure looks similar to others I have seen.
Ok, I know this sounds gross, but this man deeply needed help. Lea took Jeremiah to the sub-county hospital but the doctor was not available to see him until the following week. They took an X-ray and found that he had an infection in the bone (osteomyelitis). The wound was cleaned with a process called debridement and bandaged, but they asked him to have this done again every other day at a nearby clinic. The cost of doing this would be too high for the man, so Lea decided to do something about it herself. She got the supplies she needed so she could change the bandages and clean the wound herself (she does have some first aid training). So every other day, Jeremiah shows up at Lea's house and she cleans and bandages the wound, even though it is terribly hard to look at and smells terrible, and dead skins comes off when she wipes the wound with iodine.
Lea prays for Jeremiah regularly when he visits. As she cleaned the wound and re-bandaged it on Jeremiah's first visit, Lea noticed he had tears in his eyes. He said, "I am amazed at how a complete stranger would clean my wound for free." This is what it means to treat others the way we want to be treated.
Mary
Her swollen hand dangles over a bucket on the side of the bed as the nurse removes the blackened dead skin and tissue, letting it drop into the bucket along with the body fluids. The smell of the rotting flesh is horrendous. Believe me you don’t want to see the picture. It is enough to imagine it, but we cannot turn our faces away from this kind of tragedy. This is the reality of a snakebite in many parts of the world where there is no antivenom and little access to proper, affordable health care.
Her name is Mary Wambui and she is 87 years old. Besides the insult of this snakebite on her body, she is also fighting Stage 3 breast cancer. She was weeding her garden two weeks ago when she was bitten by a puff adder. She did not go to a hospital because she had no money. Her hand is now so bad that she will need surgery to determine the extent of her injuries. In all likelihood they will need to amputate the hand, and if not, she will likely not be able to use it ever again.
It will be complicated for Mary with her need for cancer treatment while also needing surgery for her hand. She has been transferred to a Level 5 hospital where she can get the proper treatment she needs. But the family is very worried about the cost of her treatment and how they will obtain the money to pay the bill when the time comes
Anne
In 2012, Ann was bitten by a puff adder while she was doing her farm chores. And she was six months pregnant.
She was rushed to Murera clinic, but there was no antivenom.
She was taken to Kiutine clinic, but there was no antivenom.
She was transported to Maua General Hospital - no antivenom.
She was taken to Maua Methodist Hospital - no antivenom.
She was finally admitted at Maua hospital, and three days later, in order to save her life because of the extent of swelling and tissue damage, her right leg was amputated. While she was pregnant ...
The good news is that she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She is now the mother of eight children at the age of 49. And she was fortunate enough to be fitted with a prosthetic leg.
Nancy
On of the SCAN Directors, Mbogori Zablon, arose at 5:00 am to catch transport to an off-the-grid location in a remote area of Tharaka-Nithi County. It was raining heavily and the rivers were swollen, making crossings difficult. Zablon was on his way to attend the funeral of an 11-year-old girl in Grade 4 who was sadly killed by a snake last week. Her name was Nancy Mukami. At the time, the mother was at home with her five small children - all asleep on the floor because they had no beds. Around 8 pm the mother heard a noise coming from the poultry house. She went out to investigate and found that a snake had gotten in with the chickens. When she shown her flashlight on the snake, it slithered into the farmhouse through the open door and bit Nancy on the cheek before hiding in a crevice somewhere in the house for the rest of the night. The mother reached for her phone and called one of the uncles who came over to help. He rushed the girl towards the nearest hospital in Ishiara, which was 70 km away (about 43 miles) over rough roads. Two hours after the bite, when they were only 15 km away from the hospital, Nancy succumbed to the snake's venom and passed away. The next morning the snake was found inside the house and was killed. It was a Kiriamanyore: the black mamba, one of the deadliest snakes in all of Africa. A bite from this snake can kill in as little as 30 minutes.
