Emergency antivenom availability in UK

[Somewhatfoolish]

Suppose someone smuggled a black mamba (I'm not a snake expert so if that's a silly example pick another) into the UK, it escaped, and bit someone else.

Presumably in the places it's from, if you're (in a capital city at least - am familiar with the erm variable health care there) it's possible to get ahold of the anti venom, inject you with it, and bobs yer uncle.

But what would happen in the UK? Have we got any black mamba anti venom accessible anywhere and if so where and how much? On the one hand it would seem a bit of a waste of money as aiui you have to chuck the stuff away every couple of months and it's very unlikely to be needed. On the other hand, it is surely very cheap in the grand scheme of things and it would be very embarrassing if our health service can't deal with something like that.

Presumably regardless of the likelihood of black mambas, we must get occasional exotic species coming in through banana deliveries and so on. And maybe for all I know some exotic species' venom takes days to take affect in humans. So it's not a totally crazy concern.


What's the plan, Sam?

[extraT]

Have you smuggled a black mamba into the UK?
Have you been bitten by that black mamba and asking for advice on a car forum??

Anti venom for various things are held in London and Manchester I think, but we only have three types of indigenous poisonous snakes.

[PositronicRay]

Oh good grief something else for me to worry about, I thought we only had one.

[Sheepshanks]

There’s a list of covered species. Black Mamba isn’t on it.

[Motorman74]

The adder is the only venomous snake in the UK. There are not 3 native venomous snakes...

https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/wildlife...

[Motorman74]

According to the daily fail, this is the list of anti-venons stored in the UK.

Snake

Carpet Viper

King Cobra

Terciopelo

Central American bushmaster

South American rattlesnake

Puff adder

Gaboon adder

Saw-scaled viper

Black-necked Spitting cobra

Death adder

Eastern brown snake

Tiger snake

King Brown Snake

Coastal taipan

Chinese krait

Chinese cobra

Horned viper

Egyptian cobra

Arabian horned viper

Arabian saw-scaled viper

Burton's saw-scaled viper

Oman saw-scaled viper

Arabian cobra

Egyptian cobra

Desert cobra

Morgan's cobra

Indian spitting cobra

Banded krait

Malayan krait

Malayan pit viper

Green pit viper

Eastern Russell's viper

Spider

Black widow spider

Scorpion

Deathstalker

Arabian fat-tailed scorpion

[peterperkins]

If someone has smuggled a Black Mamba into the UK hopefully Darwin dishes out a suitable reward.

[PositronicRay]

I thought death adder sounded scary so googled it. Apparently threatened by cane toads, so not that hard. Mind you I've never met a cane toad either.

[Somewhatfoolish]

Quite reassuring we have a stockpile even if not black mambas but if it's in London or Manchester how is it meant to work in practice.

Suppose someone is bitten by a black widow spider in Skegness. How do they get the anti venom? Helicopter? How do doctors know what to do, are they trained on it or do they have to lookup the procedures? Both logistical and medical.

[limmy01]

My friend keeps a load of dangerous snakes in his shed like outbuilding, if I remember right, Liverpool have quite a good stock of anti venom

[okgo]

Somewhatfoolish said:

Quite reassuring we have a stockpile even if not black mambas but if it's in London or Manchester how is it meant to work in practice.

Suppose someone is bitten by a black widow spider in Skegness. How do they get the anti venom? Helicopter? How do doctors know what to do, are they trained on it or do they have to lookup the procedures? Both logistical and medical.

Zoo’s mate.

Must happen fairly regularly that people get done. I’m sure there are ways and means of doing it.

[Sheepshanks]

limmy01 said:

My friend keeps a load of dangerous snakes in his shed like outbuilding, if I remember right, Liverpool have quite a good stock of anti venom

Yes, at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

[Chromegrill]

Health professionals working in relevant specialties have ways of getting hold of all sorts of treatments in an emergency though for obvious reasons storage details would not be in the public domain. One of the issues with snakes and antivenom is working out what type - most people would probably struggle to describe even what colour it was if they were bitten by a snake, let alone offer a sufficiently detailed description of the reptile to allow a decent stab at identification outside the species native to the UK, though the likelihood of being bitten by a venomous snake that was not native to the UK if you aren't a n exotic reptile handler is pretty remote.

There again, antivenon isn't automatically needed, many snakes are not poisonous to humans and their harm comes more from poor wound care, risk of tetanus etc. Antivenom can provoke severe allergic reactions in humans and is not without its risks, which have to be carefully balanced in any situation where it was being actively considered.

[firemunki]

extraT said:

but we only have three types of indigenous poisonous snakes.

We don't have any poisonous snakes, venomous snakes on the other hand: just the single native species, adders.

The distinction has been drilled into me by my partner so now I can share the knowledge!

[Somewhatfoolish]

Chromegrill said:

though for obvious reasons storage details would not be in the public domain

It may be obvious to you but what are the obvious reasons? I appreciate the NHS isn't going to be spending money on buying google ads to advertise precisely where they're held to the curious, but is there any reason it would need to be "hush hush"?

[pavarotti1980]

Somewhatfoolish said:

Suppose someone smuggled a black mamba (I'm not a snake expert so if that's a silly example pick another) into the UK, it escaped, and bit someone else.

Presumably in the places it's from, if you're (in a capital city at least - am familiar with the erm variable health care there) it's possible to get ahold of the anti venom, inject you with it, and bobs yer uncle.

But what would happen in the UK? Have we got any black mamba anti venom accessible anywhere and if so where and how much? On the one hand it would seem a bit of a waste of money as aiui you have to chuck the stuff away every couple of months and it's very unlikely to be needed. On the other hand, it is surely very cheap in the grand scheme of things and it would be very embarrassing if our health service can't deal with something like that.

Presumably regardless of the likelihood of black mambas, we must get occasional exotic species coming in through banana deliveries and so on. And maybe for all I know some exotic species' venom takes days to take affect in humans. So it's not a totally crazy concern.


What's the plan, Sam?

Regional specialist centres hold stocks of various drugs for emergency use and anti-venoms are some of them.

[J4CKO]

Dont you get those from Ann Summers ?

[WyrleyD]

According to my snakebite book (used to live on the edge of the Kalahari) after being bitten by a Black Mamba you'd have about 45 mins before collapsing into a coma then it becomes fatal after 7 hours (100% of the time they reckon). So unless you had the anti-venom with you you'd be a goner anyway.

[Allegro_Snapon]

Remember, as we were told in Scouts, someone needs to kill the snake and take it with you so the correct venom can be identified. You don't want to get Cross-death-head-viper vemon when a Sudanese Todger Adder bites you.

[yellowjack]

In the words of a ranch manager when I worked in Kenya for a couple of months... "if you get bitten by a Puff Adder, have a beer. It will probably be your last". We were about an hour's flying time from the nearest helicopter, and it was another hour back.

Short, fat, aggressive, likes to dominate it's surroundings, and never gives ground. There's quite a lot of powerfully built company directors Puff Adders in the PH forums...

We also killed a small, slim black-ish snake in one of the structures we were building. It had slithered out of a mortar joint into the building and two of our blokes (sleeping in the building to "guard the tools") were "trapped" up on their camp beds while it slithered about on the concrete floor. No idea what it was, but after we lopped it's head off with a shovel and put it in a small bucket, we showed it to some locals who were labouring on site. They took one look and then took many steps back. After we were sure it had been dead a while I opened it's mouth with a Leatherman tool and it had two nasty looking "folded back" fangs in there. Could have been a juvenile Mamba, I suppose, but I can't find the photos I took of it anymore to check. If I remember correctly some of the pictures I took I included a ruler for comparison and it was only about 1 foot long.