Epidemiological Characteristics of Snake-Bite Victims in Gadarif Hospital, Eastern Sudan

This was a prospective cross sectional hospital based study included 117 patients with a definitive history of snake bite and clinical features consistent with the pres¬ence of fang marks at the emergency department, Gadarif Hospital, Eastern Sudan from 1st January 2015 to 1st January 2016 to identify the epidemiological factors of snake bite. The majority of these 117 patients were adult (86.3%) and male gender constituted 85.4%. Most of the patients were of rural residence (65.8%) and were involved in farming related activities (68.3%). A relatively high proportion of snake bite episodes happened in the afternoon times (53.9%) and half of the cases were reported during August (18%) and November. (12.8%). Lower limbs were involved in maximum number of the cases (83.7%). The reported systemic reaction included: swelling (100%), sweating (100%), hypotension (54.7%), nausea (51.%), vomiting (47.8%), local bleeding (13.6%), hymoptysis (1.7%) and neurotoxic symptoms (0.8%). In this study, there were ten (8.5%) deaths; 7 had grade 3 and the other three patients had grade 4 envenomation. In conclusion Snake bites is a real medical threat in Eastern Sudan; thus, it is very important to educate the native people to increase awareness about the risk of snake bites in particular among male, farmers and during the period from August to November.