Durban – A pregnant woman had to be rushed to hospital after she was bitten by a snake resembling a ring-necked spitting cobra on her right hand.
On Sunday Underberg Emergency Medical Services (UEMS) manager Kate Bodmann said mother and baby were alright.
“Due to her pregnancy, she could not be given anti-venom, it would be a high risk for her child,” Bodmann said.
“They (hospital) are treating her symptoms but it is 50/50 over her finger whether it would be amputated or not.”
Bodmann said on Friday, UEMS had received a call at 3.35pm from a local company in Himeville in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands where someone had been bitten by a snake.
“RV01 and A01 responded to the scene where they found a 28-year-old female who’d sustained a snake bite from a rinkhals (resembling a cobra) to her right hand,” Bodmann said.
“UEMS paramedics suspected the patient sustained a dry bite, but due to the circumstances that the woman was 21-weeks pregnant, she was transported to a Pietermaritzburg hospital.”
Bodmann said reports from the scene indicated that the woman was in her office when she got up to go to the bathroom and found the snake in the doorway. While trying to escape through the door past the reptile, it struck the patient on the hand.
She said the snake was killed by employees.
Daily News