SNAKE BITES
The world's ten most poisonous snakes all live in Australia. The cobra is thought by many to be more poisonous; but fatalities arising from cobra bites relate to the volume of venom and not to its potency. The snake with the most potent venom in the world is the Western Plains Taipan or Small Scaled Snake. Its cousin Oxyuranus Scutalis, the Taipan which lives along the north-east coast of Queensland takes pride of second place.
3000 Australians each year are bitten by snakes and fortunately most of these people are not envenomated. Antivenom is required in only ten per cent of cases.
Over the last decade a great change has transformed the First Aid adopted in the presence of a snake bite. No longer are tourniquets advised. No longer are people expected to incise the bite with a knife or a sharp object and suck out the poison. All that is required is that the victim stay still while an elastocrepe bandaged is applied firmly over the bite and around an affected limb.
Unless snake venom is injected directly into an artery or vein the poison from a bite travels through the bodies’ lymphatic system. This system is occluded by firm pressure, allowing blood circulation to and from an affected limb to continue as poison is trapped at the site of envenomation.
During the period immediately after a snake bite the victim is required to stay still because it is muscle contractions that propels the venom through the lymphatic system. Only a doctor is allowed to remove the compressive bandage. And then only in a hospital where a supply of antivenom is ready for immediate use. It becomes the second aim of First Aid to get the snake bite victim to that source of antivenom as soon as humanly possible.
Helpers are not advised to wipe or wash snake bite venom away from the site of a bite. This venom is utilized at the hospital by venom detection kits. In this way the appropriate antivenom can be chosen all the more quickly, with a minimum of fuss and bother.
Home Remedies
70 per cent of snake bites occur when people go after the snake. So don't chase snakes. Let them run wild and free. Another heartening statistic is that 90 per cent of snake bites occur on an arm or a leg. In the presence of an occlusive bandage and prompt transfer to hospital no deaths need ever occur. All farmers, hikers, bush walkers and greenies, need to keep a large elastocrepe bandage in their back pockets. The bandage can be used to treat snake bites, stop the bleeding of lacerations and to splint limbs in the case of a fracture or a fall.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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