Scooters save lives of snakebite victims
Nepal project achieves dramatic drop in deaths by using motorbike helpers to rush the stricken to hospital
By Nathan Seppa
PHILADELPHIA — Enlisting volunteers with motorbikes to rush snakebite victims to regional hospitals has slashed the fatality rate in such emergencies to almost nothing in a part of Nepal where snakebites are frequent, physician Sanjib Kumar Sharma reported December 5 at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Sharma, an internist in Dharan at the B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, works in lowland southeastern Nepal, a region bordering India. Bites from poisonous snakes such as kraits, cobras and vipers are the leading cause of death in this rural area, he said. This is in large part because the population is poorly educated in handling such bites, and victims often don’t get proper treatment in time.
In an earlier study in Nepal, an analysis of 20 fatal snakebites showed that only four of the victims died in a hospital. The other 16 died en route or in a village, Sharma said.