Kaltungo’s deadly snakes defy medics

Dipa, a farmer was bitten by the poisonous snake 11 days earlier and due to ignorance and poverty, he was not brought to the center immediately for medical attention despite the fact that snake treatment at the center is free. Dipa said he resorted to the use of local herbs for treatment because he believed […]

Dipa, a farmer was bitten by the poisonous snake 11 days earlier and due to ignorance and poverty, he was not brought to the center immediately for medical attention despite the fact that snake treatment at the center is free. Dipa said he resorted to the use of local herbs for treatment because he believed that traditional medicine was more effective.

The victim, who was bitten by the snake on his right ankle, risked losing his foot as gangrene is setting on the affected part. The complication was the result of failure to report to the center in good time.

Dipa said, “Most of our ailments are treated by using traditional medicine; the snake bite did not heal because I was not lucky to have gotten the right herbs to apply”.

Like Dipa, when our reporter visited the snake bite center he saw some patients on admission receiving treatment while laying on the floor due to acute shortage of accommodation at the center which was established in 1974.

The center that was started by the missionaries went through several years of neglect after it was taken over by the federal government. The treatment center that was started as an attachment to the General Hospital, Kaltungo, with only three wards, after 30 years cannot boast of a single additional block to its original structures.

Speaking on the matter, the medical officer of the center, Dr. Abubakar Sa’idu Balla, said there was a proposed plan by the government that was conceived in 2008 for the expansion and rehabilitation of the center but the project is yet to begin.

However, the Gombe State government had promised to intervene in the expansion project by constructing more wards and other needed structures.

Commenting on the influx of snake bite victims, the medical officer in charge said the center received over 600 patients in the last five months, indicating that the patients visit the center on the average of six per day.

According to him, an average of eight patients per day is not much for the center to contend with but added that owing to a high level of ignorance among the victims compounded their problem as most of them only reported to the hospital at the time when their case had become helpless. In this situation, the center has to keep them for a couple of months for effective treatment.

To this end, “late coming to the center by the victims leads to the over stretching of the already inadequate facilities and that compels us to have a veranda and corridor cases as you can see the male and female wards are filled up to the brim”, the medical officer added.

He also stressed that the center is also bedeviled with erratic power supply. Therefore, keeping the vaccines at the required temperature of 2/3 degrees has been a major challenge which the center has to grapple with, saying the small generator set at the center could not provide sufficient power to keep the cool chain store running.

For the years the center has been in existence, it could not boast of a single vehicle that is in good condition for the haulage of their drugs consignment which usually comes through Abuja.

 Visiting the wards by our reporter, seven-year-old Abdu Maigamo was seen lying on his bed in pain after he was bitten by a snake on his private part which was not noticed by his parents until after three days.

People like the young Abdu, who is a son of a nomadic Fulani, who lives in the bush are prone to a high risk of being bitten by snakes in a place where there is a very high prevalence rate of snake presence like Kaltungo and environs.

A daughter of another nomad who was only identified by her mother as Ramatu, aged 5, was also seen receiving treatment after she was bitten by a snake on her leg while playing.

 Speaking to Weekly Trust, Garba Bahago, a petty trader from Dogon Ruwa village said the center has been very helpful but government is not willing to improve the standard of the treatment center by putting in additional structures to house the patients available at a time.

He said some years back, he was a victim and when he visited the center, he was not lucky then because the center had run out of drugs and so he was stabilized in the hospital until some supply was made.

“I thought I would die because the venom had spread all over me, I was vomiting and somehow unconscious but miraculously, the center was supplied with some drugs then I got treated” Bahago said.

 Thomas Yila, a farmer, told Weekly Trust that the situation was improving now as the treatment center is in constant supply of drugs but another thing that was missing was awareness, particularly among the village dwellers. “Rural farmers should be sensitized the use of gloves and rain boot while in the farm and once bitten by a snake, they should rush to the center for treatment,” he said.