01/02/2026
A friend and colleague sent me a video yesterday night of a cobra that was caught alive and killed. They said it bit a young lady. She got to a hospital… and still died.
I really wish this is one of the cases I can say the solution was as simple as ‘rush the person to the hospital’, But the truth is, it’s not 😑💔
For a poisonous snake bite, the real treatment is snake antivenom. And sadly, antivenom is scarce in Nigeria. Especially where it is majorly needed, rural communities.
Most hospitals don’t have it. Many doctors have never even seen it physically. If it exists at all in this country, it’s usually in a few big tertiary hospitals, mostly in major cities. Even then, it may not be in stock. And if you do find it, It is very expensive. Depending on how many doses needed maybe beyond what the average Nigerian family can afford on short notice.
And the way snake venoms work isn’t something that allows for delays in management. It attacks the blood causing severe bleeding, attacks major organs, like kidneys, nerves, and heart.
How fast things go bad depends on how dangerous the snake is, but once severe symptoms start, time is not on your side. The antivenom if eventually given by then only stops further damage but the damage that has been done may not be correctable🥲
What happens in reality in our hospitals is, most snake bite victims in Nigeria are managed conservatively and symptomatically while we hope the venom effect wears off on its own as attempts are being made to find antivenom.
If it does wear off, the patient survives.
If it doesn’t and antivenom is not available or gotten on time, then the outcome can be tragic like yesterday’s sad event🥲
The reason many people still survive snake bites here is not because our system is strong. It’s because most snake bites are dry bites. That is either the snake didn’t inject venom or the venom was not potent enough to kill a human or the quantity injected wasn’t enough to kill. The last set of people who survive are those who were lucky to access the antivenom and afford it.
So the patient improves, goes home, and we all thank God.
But if it’s a highly venomous snake like a king cobra or any other very dangerous specie and real envenomation happens, omohh begin pray hard oh 🥲
This is one of the quiet problems in our healthcare system. One of the salient reasons doctors keep going on strikes.
Life saving medicines should not be impossible to find and even if they have to be expensive, they should at least exist somewhere reachable so that those who can afford it can get it.
~DR CHETA
