Snakes snatch young lives spared by floods

MUZAFFARGARH: A growing number of children in the flood-hit areas of Punjab are falling victim to snakebites following the unavailability of anti-snake venom and other medicines to treat patients, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The bloated Indus and Chanab rivers swamped the areas of Rohilanwali, Wasandewala Shahjamal, Shaher Sultan and Jatoi, uprooting thousands of people from their homes. They are now living on roadsides and on embankments under the open sky.

During a visit to the Wasandewala area it transpired that hundreds of survivors are staying at Moza Bhutta Chanab embankment without any shelter. At one place around a dozen people were mourning the death of a 10-year-old boy, Muhammad Aamir, whose body was lying on a charpoy, near the flooded Chanab. Aamir died of snakebite.

“He was my second son to have died of snake-bite within a week,” Muhammad Ashiq, the father of Aamir told The Express Tribune. He added  that hundreds of snakes were hissing around them and even crawling in their shoes and clothes.

Ashiq said that his son Usman was bitten by a snake on August 19 at an embankment. “We rushed him to a nearby healthcare centre at Khangarh where doctors informed me that they did not have anti-venom to treat my son,” a shattered Ashiq told The Express Tribune.

The boy was then ferried to the district headquarters hospital but in vain – anti-venom was not available there too. “I asked medics to arrange the medicines from the market as my house has been washed away by floodwaters,” Ashiq said, adding that the doctors refused to help him saying that they had other serious cases to attend to.

“I decided to take my son to some hakeem, but he died in the corridors of the hospital,” said the helpless father trying to choke back his tears. He then hired a rickshaw to carry the body to his makeshift home at the embankment.

“Now we are in a fix. Where should we bury the body. There is no graveyard,” he said. “We can’t bury him here at the embankment because wild beasts may dig out the body and maul it,” he added.

Zainab Bibi, the mother of Usman, said that she lost her first son on August 10. “Five-year-old Hameed had also died of snakebite while they were fleeing after floodwaters overran their village Moza Jhok, located near the Chanab river. “We could not bury his body as it was swept away by surging floodwaters,” Bibi said with tears rolling down her cheeks. She said that the family could not mourn the death of their first son as they fled the area with floodwaters chasing them.

The Express Tribune learnt from dozens of other surviving families that snakebite cases were rising at an alarming speed and that there was no anti-venom available in the area.

“I have lost my daughter in a snakebite incident,” Khddal, another flood survivor told The Express Tribune while sitting on the Chanab embankment near Khangarh. He said that the health department has not set up any medical camp in their areas.

Farasat Iqbal, the district coordination officer of Muzaffargarh, told The Express Tribune that anti-venom stocks might have run out.

However, he said that he would investigate the matter and would make sure that adequate stocks of anti-venom were available in the affected areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st, 2010.