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Social Impact of the Intoxications due to Poisonous Animals

Social Impact of the Intoxications due to Poisonous Animals.

Maraboto-Martínez, José Antonio

Coordination of Community Health of the l.M.S.S. (Mexican Institute of Social Security), México, D.F.

The great diversity of geographical conditions, biotical and climatic of Mexico, as well as their great biodiversity and the economic and social circumstances of a country in development, they favor that population's nuclei are exposed to the stings and bites of poisonous animals.

A high population percentage lives under marginal conditions, in human establishments with great geographical dispersion as homesteads and rural areas that do not have services of sanitary infrastructure, neither housing with materials adapted in roofs and walls (cardboard, wood, adobe, among others); these materials leave hollows or fissures that allow the access to the houses and the bedrooms of the poisonous animals.

In some urban and suburban areas poisonous animals exist, since these it can be transported, together with the foods or products of the field, to places that are not their natural habitat. All the above-mentioned, joined to some cultural aspects, mainly the magic ones - religious that impede their destruction in these environments, have favored that a growing number of cases of intoxication exists in our country for sting or bite of poisonous animals.

In Mexico, factors common of risk exist with relationship to the field of the health, such as: the conditions existent biogeographical in the neartic and neotropical regions allow a great scorpion and snake fauna. Our country takes the first place in reptiles, with classified 717 species of the 6 300; it is located in the second place in diversity of mammals, when having 449 of the 4 170 existent species; in amphibians squatter the fourth place, with 282 of the 4 184 species that have been detected, and in birds squatter the twelfth place with 1 150 of the 9 198 classes.

Some in the ways of life and daily activities that the population carries out, favor the sting or bite of these poisonous animals; the biological conditions as age (smaller than 5 years and those bigger than 65 and but), the not well nutritional state and the alterations in the immune answer increase the problem; the population's insufficient participation to carry out measures of prevention and specific protection; the practice of labor activities in the field; as well as the little interest for part the authorities and society in general to have a healthy environment.

For all him before mentioned, it is considered that the intoxications for sting or bite of poisonous animals continue being a problem of public health.

In the Mexican Institute of the Public Health in 1994, they were included inside the system of information to identify the problem at institutional level, the pertinent exits. In 1998, he/she was carried out a survey that allowed reorienting the interventions starting from their results.

The problems have several aspects that it is necessary to stand out:

·Exists a culture of health that has to be increased, in order to be able to carry out actions of anticipation, prevention and the population's participation.

·The affected population is the one that is in productive stage.

·The age groups of smaller than 5 years and those of 65 and more years are those that bigger mortality presents.

·Without opportune medical intervention the lethality is bigger.

·The biggest number of cases of mortality for intoxications for sting of poisonous animals happens in places to little access to the medical attention.

The intoxications for poisonous animals in Mexico, it is since an endemic problem with an upward tendency of 1 1 1,912 cases reported in 1993 for 220,986 in 1998 they were notified, which represents a percentage increase of 97%, but it has been possible to diminish the mortality with the application of interventions, as the training to the personnel of health and to have the specific anti-venoms, as well as the necessary medications for the attention to the population that presents intoxication for sting of poisonous animals in all the Medical Units of the System

Before this panorama it is indispensable that they are carried out actions of Integral Attention, with emphasis in the anticipatory, to leave the epidemic surveillance, 1 foment of the health, prevention and opportune medical attention.

Inside the actions that we should carry out in Community Health it is indispensable to achieve that the community and the society in general impel and promote the individual's participation and the family, as well as to concert with the local authorities and the sector health, with the purpose that they act in combined actions in their favor. The information and qualification to identify the factors of risk are necessary actions to apply protection measures that avoid the sting or bite of the poisonous animals and so that in the event of requiring it, attend with opportunity to receive medical attention.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    08 Oct 2002
  • Date of issue
    Dec 2001
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