‘Fight poison with poison’: the moment a desperate father made a poisonous snake bite his daughter to ‘cure’ her serious illness

An eight-year-old girl from northern China is in a stable condition in hospital after her father made a poisonous snake bite her in the hope it would cure a blood disorder.

The father from Wuqiang couny in Hebei province let the snake bite her on the wrist on Thursday and she was then taken to hospital, the ImagineChina photo agency reported.

She has aplastic anaemia, a bone marrow condition that harms the production of blood cells.

Wang Jingshuai, the 33-year-old father, was quoted as saying that the family had been in heavy debt to try to cure his daughter.

Without money for hospital treatment, he had tried many folk remedies and the snake bite was just one, following the Chinese medicine principle of “fighting poison with poison”.

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All methods have failed so far, he admitted.