interior

Snakebites rattle Veraguas

Ney Abdiel Castillo/LA PRENSA

hidden dangers: More people are bitten every year in the province of Veraguas than in any other region in Panama. Anti-venom is on hand at all of the area’s hospitals and clinics.1079878

Emergency room doctors at the Hospital Luis Chicho Fábrega in Veraguas wasted no time in attending to Juan Pardo, a 56-year-old farmer who arrived with a snakebite on his right leg.

Pardo was plowing his fields in the community of La Soledad, just south of Soná, when he came upon the snake. Pardo’s fellow workers bought crucial time by stabilizing him until emergency staff could administer the anti-venom that saved his life.

Despite the frequency of snakebites in the province, Romelia de la Guardia, regional director of the Ministerio de Salud (Minsa) in Veraguas, reported that the only facilities equipped with the anti-venom are hospitals and clinics, leaving rural health centers and school infirmaries unprepared.

Guardia explained that Minsa protocol calls for the health centers to respond first to a medical crisis before sending the patient to a hospital. This way, should a patient suffer an adverse reaction to the serum, trained emergency staff are able to react to the crises.

A review of emergency rooms in the province’s hospitals found that all had posters detailing the most common poisonous snakes, their characteristics and how to attend to a bite depending on the type of venom.

The presence of those posters is not just for show. The region has the highest rate of snakebites in the country and, in fact, one of the highest in all of Central America, according to Dr. José Mena Batista, director of the emergency room at the Hospital Luis Chicho Fábrega.

That information, said Batista, is nearly as important as getting a snakebite patient to a hospital as quickly as possible. He recommended that patients provide medical staff with as much information as possible regarding the species of snake andthe type of venom involved.

As Panama’s snake season approaches, with cases usually peaking in October and November, Batista explained that Minsa, in cooperation with the Caja de Seguro Social (CSS) and the Universidad de Panamá, has put together an organized plan to measure the incidence of snakebites. The ultimate goal, he added, is to map the province according to the habitats of the most common snake species, to better prepare hospitals to deal with those cases.

According to figures from the Departamento de Epidemiología del Ministerio de Salud in Veraguas, 349 cases of snakebites were reported in 2007. Some 203 cases, however, have already been seen during the first six months of 2008, reflecting a significant increase.

Of these cases, about 30 percent occur in the district of Soná, followed by San Francisco, Santa Fe and Santiago.