Snakebite victims in Karnali die before reaching hospitals

Remote locations, lack of anti-venom, and poorly-equipped health facilities make survival difficult for victims.

At dawn on August 13, twenty-one-year-old Lokendra Karki was asleep inside his thatched-roof house at Karkiwada in ward 5 of Khadachakra Municipality in Kalikot when a snake sank its fangs into the index finger of his right hand. He screamed, which made his wife, Shanti Bista, who had given birth just five days earlier, awake. She rushed out, crying for help.