Snake bites cause kidney failure, blindness, deformity and death

Patrick Kigen with her 6-year-old daughter Chebet Lagat at their home in Emos village, Mogotio, Baringo county. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

When a cobra wound its way into her bed and bit her wrist, it took Chebet Lang’at two hours from Emios village in Baringo to Marigat Hospital, 50km away.

Her father Patrick Kigen tied her arm with a piece of cloth, then went searching to kill the snake. Chebet’s wrist was swelling, fast. The venom had spread, paralysing her arm by the time they got to Marigat. “If I took her for medication on time, she would be better,” Kigen says of his eight-year-old daughter.