Anti-venom serum now a luxury drug

Snake bite treatment is not subsidized by the State of Cameroon. Yet the International Society of Toxicology (SIT) indicates in its study that each year, between 2255 and 6206 cases of snake bites are reported and about 266 deaths.

"The venom of vipers causes bleeding and that of cobras fatal respiratory paralysis," says biologist Legrand Gonwouo Nono in the columns of the newspaper Mutations of Wednesday, October 28, 2015.

According to Armand Nkwescheu, Epidemiologist, it takes at least "two anti poisonous serum bulbs" to save a patient from a snake bite which logically would amount to 120 000 FCFA to the patient, an amount that is not always available.

"It's a luxury treatment. We do not have enough money to buy such a product," says a village resident to a doctor. The high cost and unavailability of serums pushes victims to fall back to traditional practitioners under the pretext that the ancestors fared well with their medicine.

Others buy fake serums as "laboratories have stopped production because they were not selling" admits a pharmacist to the newspaper. Now delivery is made after orders.

Doctors do not really appreciate the makeshift methods used by the population, especially villages, if bitten by a snake. "When I was bitten by a snake, my mother took me to a lady who, having swallowed a few drops of a potion, applied it to the infected area," explains Jean Abena, who says he was saved by traditional medicine.

However, it could equally have been a fluke according to the doctors because sometimes patients do not need an anti poisonous serum. Also, to Dr. Armand Nkwescheu, "health workers and people must be made aware of this. When you make a tourniquet, you attach and tighten the part above the bite. This dangerous practice prevents blood and lymph circulation in the body," he warns.

Moreover, according to him, the healing functions of the black stone commonly used in cases of snake bite are not yet approved. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers snakebites as a public health problem. They surpass polio and measles, as they cause over 120,000 deaths worldwide.