By SIMON BURCH

HOSPITAL staff have stocked up on anti-snake venom serum following reports of an increase in the numbers of adders in north Oxfordshire this summer.

The accident and emergency department at the Horton General Hospital in Banbury has ordered more supplies of the chemical after farmers in the area reported seeing more of the scaly creatures than usual, slithering around in the summer sun.

Last weekend at the Cropredy Folk Festival, a music fan fell into a ditch and was bitten by an adder.

Incidents involving snake bites are rare in Oxfordshire but Dr Grizelda George, a consultant at Banbury's A & E department, said the hospital doid not want to take any chances.

She told the Oxford Mail: "We have had reports that there are more snakes than usual and so we now have a larger supply of serum than before in the department.

"When we got the reports we decided we should look at out stocks of anti-venom serum."

Dr George added: "We always used to hold it, but there was an initiative to hold it in the region and not necessarily at the hospital. But when we heard about an increase we got some for the department. "In my ten years here I have never seen someone who has got bitten.

"I was brought up in the countryside and I have never an adder, only grass snakes. It is a rather unique environmental hazard."

However, Dr George pointed out that the hospital would only use the anti-venom serum in more severe cases.

She added: "The anti-venom can produce its own side-effects, so we would leave people to get better if the bite was not too bad. "We can give symptomatic relief with pain-killers."

Like all snakes, the zig-zag-patterned adders are more afraid of human beings than we normally are of them, and will bite only when they are disturbed.

They are Britain's only poisonous snake.

The effect of an adder bite is usually sickness and swelling around the bite.

In more extreme cases there may be problems with the circulation, but this is rare.

The best advice if you are bitten is to keep the affected part of your body still.

Moving it around will increase the circulation and spread the poison.

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