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Between June and May , snakes were collected in the Western Region, Ghana, an area of 13, square miles with a population of , according to a census. Most of the snakes were taken in Tarkwa by the author, being met on the road while driving a car.
The poisonous Abstract : Between June and May , snakes snakes Subject Category: Organism Names see more details were collected in the Western Region, Ghana ghana Subject Category: Geographic Entities see more details , an area of 13, square miles with a population of , according to a census.
The poisonous front-fanged snakes in the collection were 40 night adders, Causus rhombeatus , 13 gaboon and rhinoceros vipers, Bitis gabonica bitis gabonica Subject Category: Organism Names see more details and B. The author tabulates [without indicating the source of the information] the incidence incidence Subject Category: Properties see more details of snake bite in the Western Region during January to June as totalling with no deaths. The absence of deaths is attributed to early admission, good treatment, bites caused by less dangerous species, and also to the fact that the most serious cases were not seen by a doctor owing to rapid death or because help was sought outside the hospital.
Peak incidence is in May and August [this conflicts with fig. During a total of cases were recorded in 11 hospitals, a mean annual incidence of per , population. This figure probably represents less than half the cases treated by qualified and para-medical personnel. More clinical detail in the future would be specially welcome.
Details of treatment are not given except that Government hospitals use polyvalent Behring antivenom. Allstair Reid. Back to top. Edit annotation. Cancel Edit annotation. Add annotation. Cancel Add annotation. Print citation. Lastly, all that sounds pretty extreme, but really it's only common sense, and in truth, very few tourists would be bitten by snakes in West Africa. Just take the sensible precautions and try not to stress about it - rather focus on enjoying Ghana!
Regards Cathy. Understandable question. Yes, the locals are very much aware of their snake population, and for a fairly good reason. Cobras, pythons, and adders, along with the most venomous of them all, the Black Mamba. That said, considering the overall nightmarish scenario, far less people die from snake bites, than you might expect, but I am fairly sure that it is due to the healthy respect the locals have for the.
Every year there are several thousand deaths contributed to snakes in all of Africa, so do the math. Consider all the millions of people that live there, and you will see that the odds of getting personal with a snake are minimal. Urban areas like Accra are less prone to snakes and rural areas get a lot more as is to be expected.
So be careful up north eh? Ghana is a favorite of mine in Africa, and I would not, nor did I ever let the snakes keep me away, but I was very much aware of the issue.
By the way, it took me a while to get used to the lizards that run all over the place, indoors and out Make sure that you see a travel medicine specialist prior to your trip. Malaria can and will kill you faster than the snakes will.
If you are from the U. Go to a specialist. Have fun Cathy, we wrote at the same time, - again I tried not to be too blunt, but it is a good valid question. I understand your concern but if you have traveled one time with tro-tro you have been in much more danger than snakes will expose you to. That said, follow the good advice in this thread to make yourself feel more comfortable.
Even people. Wikipedia disputes local wisdom. African Rock Pythons, it insists, are not poisonous. They have no venom. Who do you believe? Sitting in front of my computer I am all for the latest word from science. I decide to phone friends in Ghana. I call Hamidu, my translator, a brilliant self-taught linguist. Bed-ridden since the age of sixteen Hamidu is the closest thing to a saint I have ever met.
He picks up his phone. I phone other people: Christie, Gifty. The verdict is unanimous: pythons are poisonous. He decided to climb to the top of Kaleo Rock, a local inselberg, a four-hundred-foot high plug of granite erupting out of the savannah plain.
Rock pythons are fond of such places. Greg was warned before he started out that he ought to leave an offering for the pythons if he wanted to make a successful climb. He ignored this superstitious advice and easily made it to the top of the rock. He probably even took a few photographs up there. But then, halfway through his descent, a python bit him. His friends rushed him to the hospital in town. Because he was a Peace Corps volunteer, the US Air Force picked him up and flew him non-stop to Frankfurt for treatment, administering non-stop blood transfusions on the way.
That, anyway, is how the story goes. About a week after I phone Hamidu, he sends me an unexpected email. The talk about pythons has triggered memories. He came home bathed in sweat and with blood seeping out from old scars and tribal markings. The family took him straight to the doctor who sent him to the hospital. While he was recovering in there, his household was visited by another snake, this one a giant python. She called to her co-wife to bring a stick but the co-wife took one look at the snake and said it was too big for the two of them to kill.
They called for help from two men from neighboring houses. They shot the python full of arrows but the snake just turned around and broke off the shafts. The men then resorted to sticks, attacking the python in turns. Eventually they managed to kill it, skin it and share out the meat. The snakeskin measured over fifteen feet in length. It was two feet wide. Rock pythons can be found almost anywhere in the north of Ghana but they are particularly fond of inselbergs because these are cracked and riddled with caves.
Local people -and outsiders — in search of fortune go to these places to leave offerings of choice food in expensive containers. There are a number of python caves in a pair of conjoined granite hills, twin peaks, half a mile out from my village, Danko.
I told my assistant, Boris, I wanted to see those caves. Wanted to see what people left there as offerings. Imagined something out of Lord of the Rings, yawning caverns guarded by monstrous rearing vipers.
The large pond that intervened between the village and the hills would be swollen and spilling over its banks. The surrounding marsh would be knee deep in water and mud. Pond water contains leeches, larvae, amoebas, guinea worm cysts and the microbes responsible for cholera, hepatitis, polio, dysentery, schistosomiasis, etc.
We set off half a year later in the dry season, at the peak of harmattan, skirting the pond on a footpath of hardened mud. Wild cotton bushes thrived in the pebbles and scree at the base of the hills. Elephant grass flourished further up; it was scratchy and strong, more like tall reeds than grass and it made for extremely slow going. Not until half way up the hill did we encounter granite, grey and knobbled and full of potholes.
Going was easier here and within ten minutes we were at the top of the yoke that joined the two hills. I was terribly disappointed. A twenty foot snake would have to squash itself flat to get in there. And there was no chance at all of seeing a monster ourobouros guarding the entrance to a gaping cavern.
There were, however, a multitude of food dishes spread out over the ground near the cracks in the rock. All of these dishes were empty.
Some of them looked as if they had been sitting there for years. Boris looked around. He said he had spied an easier way to get back. He started off downhill to the yoke between the two hills. He was standing at the opening to a long passage that dropped down through the vegetation, a perfectly round, pipe-like tube three or four feet in diameter.
Elephant grass had been pressed flat to the ground at the bottom of the tube. On the sides, brush and grasses had been forced apart only to meet again overhead. Boris started down this tube, taking it at an easy trot, bent half over at the waist.
He told me to follow and promised there would be an adjoining passage further along that would bring us out at the bottom of the hills. We were in a tunnel that looked as if a giant bowling ball had rolled down the hill flattening vegetation along its way. Unwelcome thoughts of Dune entered my head.
Spice worms. My heart started beating: thump, thump, thump. There was a python living near my house in Danko. It kept itself well-hidden and for months no one was aware of it.
This was back in the nineties. There were as yet no toilets in the village.
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