A four-year-old girl, Rithu, died on Thursday morning after being bitten by an Indian spectacled cobra in West Eleri, marking the eighth snakebite fatality in Kerala in just ten days. Her death has brought renewed focus on the state’s struggling emergency response system, where a lack of local medicine and staff continues to prove fatal.

The incident occurred last Monday while the child was playing near a relative’s house. When a ball rolled near a burrow, she was bitten while trying to fetch it. Although she was quickly taken to a nearby hospital, the facility lacked the necessary antivenom. Rithu was eventually moved to a medical college hospital in a neighbouring district, where she remained on a ventilator until she passed away.

Infrastructure and treatment risks

Simply having antivenom in stock does not guarantee safety. Administering the treatment is a high-risk procedure because the medicine itself can cause a violent allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis. This reaction, which occurs in up to 43% of cases, can lead to sudden heart failure or breathing difficulties.

To manage this, patients need constant monitoring and immediate access to intensive care equipment. Many local government hospitals are currently unprepared to handle these complications, forcing doctors to refer victims to larger, distant centres. This delay can be life-threatening as complications often develop within minutes.

Overcrowded emergency rooms

Even when medicine is available, staffing remains a critical barrier. National guidelines require doctors to check a victim’s vital signs every 15 to 30 minutes, but this is rarely possible in Kerala’s overcrowded casualty departments. Often, a single medical officer is left to treat hundreds of patients at once, ranging from minor illnesses to serious injuries.

Medical associations are now calling for a scientific sorting system to ensure critical cases are seen first. They argue that without more doctors and better equipment in rural hospitals, the safety of snakebite victims cannot be guaranteed.