News of children dying of snakebite during the monsoon is nothing surprising. But a snake dying from a child's bite? There is no mistake in the headline: a child bit a whole snake to death, and a cobra at that. The incident took place in India's Bihar state.

"His mother was working at the back of the house, stacking wood for the stove. Govinda was playing nearby. That is when the snake came out. As soon as he saw the snake, Govinda grabbed it and bit it. Then we all noticed it was a gehuan snake," said Motisari Devi. In that part of Bihar the cobra is locally called the gehuan.

Motisari Devi's one-year-old grandson Govinda made headlines after biting a whole cobra to death last Thursday.

Govinda's family lives in Mohchhi Bankatwa, a small village in Bihar's West Champaran district. His father, Sunil Sah, sells ice cream going from village to village.

Motisari Devi said that after biting the snake with his teeth, Govinda lost consciousness for a while. They first took him to Majhaulia primary health centre and from there to Bettiah hospital. The child is now well.

Neyaz, a local journalist in Majhaulia, said the child returned home on Saturday evening. "Everyone is talking about him. Snakes coming out in the month of Shraban is very normal, but this is the first such incident in our area."

One-year-old Govinda was admitted to Bettiah Government Medical College Hospital on Thursday evening, where he was treated by Dr Kumar Saurabh of the paediatrics department.

He said that when the child was brought in, his face was slightly swollen, especially around the mouth. The family told doctors the child had bitten the snake near its mouth and had perhaps even eaten part of its body.

"I had two child patients at the same time. One had been bitten by a cobra, and this one had bitten the cobra. Both children are completely well," said Dr Saurabh.

He explained that when a cobra bites a person, its venom enters the blood. The venom mixing with the blood causes neurotoxicity, affecting the nervous system, which can even be fatal.

"But when a person bites a cobra, the venom goes through the mouth into the digestive system. The body neutralises the venom and it passes out. So snake venom works in two ways: in one it affects the nervous system, in the other the body neutralises it," Dr Saurabh explained.

However, if a person bites a snake and has an ulcer or other bleeding wound in the digestive tract, the patient's condition could become critical.

According to the World Health Organization, between 80,000 and 1,30,000 people die of snakebite around the world each year. In India the figure is about 58,000, which is why India is called the "snakebite capital".

Data from Bihar's state health services show that 934 people died of snakebite in the state between April 2023 and March 2024. In the same period, 17,859 snakebite patients came for treatment at the state's government hospitals.

A central government report, meanwhile, says snakebite deaths across the country have been "under-reported". The report of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says most snakebite patients do not reach hospital, so the known number of deaths is much lower.

Seventy percent of snakebite deaths occur in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

This report is based on BBC Bangla.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.