Vipers have proliferated in Croatia. They have four bites in Split

The last case concerns a roughly 70-year-old woman from the area of Vrgorace, from where Split is about a hundred kilometers away. The snake bit her in the leg right in the garden of her house, Dnevnik.hr website reported.

She was given an antidote in the hospital in Split, where she was transferred by Vrgorac doctor Andrija Babič. “If there is only a suspicion of a viper bite, there is nothing to think about. The patient has to go to the hospital,” said Babič. “And I want to emphasize that we have an antidote and we have plenty of it,” he added.

According to the N1 Info server, Damirka Mihanovičová from the village of Donje Sitno in the mentioned region warned that there really are snakes around their house and in the nearby field where she often works with her husband.

“It’s not usual to see snakes in the swamp, but I saw him there at seven in the morning,” she described her experience on Thursday. “I don’t think it was a viper, more like a snake,” she said. “But there are snakes,” she said. “Every now and then I come across one, on the way to the field for asparagus I see two or three run over every time,” added Damirka Mihanovičová.

According to locals, one of the reasons the snakes have proliferated is because the fields are lying fallow. “They are neglected, no one works there. Previously, snakes did not even appear there, someone would have killed them immediately,” locals agree, according to the website Dnevnik.hr.

Snake hunters who used to catch the vipers for their venom, which is used to make the serum, say that no one is dealing with it now. Vipers are protected in Croatia.