The daughters of snake-bite victim Gandira Geeta Lochan said yesterday that their mother would have survived if doctors had treated her case as an emergency.
Dhanmatie Lochan, 17, said she sat at her mother’s side for over two hours at the Sangre Grande District Hospital, before she was admitted to a ward for medical treatment.
’She was sitting in the casualty department for so long, saying she was in pain and no one attended to her,’ the teenager said.
There is a toxicology management centre at the Sangre Grande Hospital, the only one in the country, to treat venomous snake bites.
Lochan, 42, was bitten on the right foot by a snake identified as a fer-de-lance, commonly known as a mapapire or bushmaster. The incident happened during heavy rains on Friday afternoon at her Cuche home, near Biche.
Lochan, a mother of two, died on Sunday morning.
Her sister-in-law, Dhandaye Pattoo, said Lochan, a gardener, was preparing for an outing to the beach when she was bitten. ’The rain was falling really hard and my daughter and I were watching the trees. Geeta was inside the living room preparing for the excursion on Saturday. The electricity went for a few seconds and when it came back she started screaming that a snake bite her,’ she said.
Pattoo said her sister-in-law was immediately taken to the Rio Claro Health Centre for treatment. ’I used a piece of string to tie the foot to prevent the poison from spreading. Her husband, Jainarine, looked all over but could not find the snake,’ she said.
Pattoo said she visited Lochan at the hospital the day before she died. ’She was in a lot of pain. She begged for some water but the nurses said no because the poison was spreading. The next morning they called to say she had died,’ she said.
Pattoo said her sister-in-law worked hard to provide for her family. ’She and her husband were farmers and they worked really hard to ensure that their children had everything they needed. It was not the first time a snake came up, but it was the first time that someone was bitten,’ she said.
Pattoo said their surroundings were sanitised to ensure that the reptile did not return.
