Snakebite, Ifunanya And The Rest Of Us

Recently, the life of a promising young, Nigerian lady, 26- year- old Lucy Ifunanya was cut short due to complications from  a snakebite at her home in Lugbe, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

An aspiring singer and also a trained architect who rose to prominence after appearing on The Voice Nigeria, Ifunanya’s death has elicited an outpouring of grief across the nation.

According to reports, the circumstance that led to her death was bizarre as it was unfortunate.

She was reported to be asleep when “the snake bite woke her up”.

She first sought treatment at a clinic in her neighbourhood. The facility did not have any anti-venom so she went to Federal Medical Centre, Jabi.

Sadly, the hospital did not have the complete required anti-venom and  eventually, she succumbed to the cold hands of death while being attended to.

Although the hospital denied in a statement that the venom had been unavailable and said claims its response had been inadequate were “unfounded and do not reflect the reality of the situation”.

For us, Ifunaya’s death has once again, brought to the fore, how the dearth of efficient healthcare delivery has become the new normal in the country.

It’s about how life has become so cheap in Nigeria, so bad that one could be bitten by a snake in the morning and die that same morning in a tertiary level of care in the nation’s capital.

For emphasis, a tertiary healthcare institution is the highest level of specialised, advanced medical care, providing complex, subspecialty, and in-patient services usually referred from primary or secondary centres .

These institutions, often teaching or specialist hospitals, use advanced technology and expertise and highly trained personnel to manage severe or complex health conditions.

It is a sad commentary, in the opinion of this newspaper, that  Ifunaya as is the case with expectant  women, could die in these level facilities due, mainly, to a lack of capacity.

For a fact, most snake bite victims in Nigeria are believed to live in rural areas and  Nigerians have expressed shock and grief that treatment in one of the nation’s highest level healthcare facility could not save her life.

Her death is coming amid clamour for a comprehensive overhaul of Nigeria’s healthcare system following the  tragic death of  writer, 📝 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s young son, Nkanu Nnamdi, barely a month ago, at a private hospital in Lagos.

The incident had sparked widespread public outcry regarding the quality of care in both public and private medical facilities in Nigeria.

The Nigerian Bar Association ( NBA) and its  former president, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba highlighted a lack of routine, mandatory, and rigorous inspections in Nigerian hospitals, and how it leads to preventable deaths.

Legal advocates are calling for a new medical governance regime to tackle professional misconduct.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that venomous snakebites are a neglected public health issue in many tropical and subtropical countries.

In Africa, between 435,000 and 580,000 snakebites requiring treatment are recorded each year.

Those bites cause about 30,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa, though some estimates suggest the real number is much higher.

Nigeria ranks among the countries worst affected by snake bites globally, with cases reaching epidemic levels in some areas.

Snake bite poisoning, medically referred to as envenomation, pose national concern and  remain a major cause of preventable deaths and disabilities, particularly in remote areas where access to health care and anti-venom is limited.

Experts claim that the shortage of anti- venom is a major reason the scale of the problem is hard to assess as it leads many victims to seek care from traditional healers. In that situation, such cases often go unrecorded.

According to figures released by the federal government, Nigeria has one of the highest incidences of snakebites globally with about 20,000 reported snakebite cases annually,and roughly 2,000 deaths reported each year.

We recall that during the 2021 International Snakebite Awareness Day, the then Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Health, Mamman Mahmuda, said that between January 2018 and December 2020, the country recorded 45,834 snake bite cases and 1,793 deaths.

He added that many cases go unreported because victims never reach health facilities.

It’s a burden, health officials say, that continues to affect rural and farming communities the most with hotspots primarily in the savanna regions of the North-East, North-Central (Middle Belt), and parts of the North-West.

Key states with high incidences include; Gombe, Plateau, Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Nasarawa, Taraba, Benue, Kogi, Kebbi, Oyo and Enugu.

The federal government keeps reeling out statistics every year to commemorate the Snake Awareness day in the month of September but no concrete measures have been put in place to address the challenge. We hope that Ifunanya’s death will positively change the narrative.

Many like Ifunanya have died in the past, some died today, and many more are likely to die tomorrow, except concrete steps are taken to address the dire situation.