This Woman Survived One Of The Deadliest Snake Attacks

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them. CHERANGAN, KENYA ― Walking home from a party in the evening light, Cheposait Adomo was unaware of the 6.5-foot black mamba snake in her path until it had coiled around her ankles and sunk in its teeth. As Adomo screamed and pulled at the slithering knot that punctured her three times, she was unaware of the two other brown-colored mambas slithering over to provide backup. “I felt the bites and then a burning sensation,” Adomo, a mother of five, said of the attack, which happened late last year near her hilly village of Cherangan, in Kenya’s West Pokot County, close to the Ugandan border. In this poor and remote area, a three-hour drive along rocky switchbacks to the nearest city, most people run for their lives at the sight of what Adomo described as “very fierce snakes” that deliver deadly bites.  “We’ve heard anecdotal reports about black mamba bites causing respiratory death within 40 minutes,” said Dr. Robert Harrison, head of the Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.  “In a sub-Saharan African remote village context, that is often too quick between bite and death to get to hospital,” he added. Adomo was saved from the other two mambas by a machete-wielding man who raced over and “cut them to pieces,&rdquo...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news