Parents have been warned to keep a close watch over their children when outdoors as snakebites are particularly common at this time of year.
The Charles Campbell Toxinology Centre based at Port Moresby General Hospital is urging parents to talk to their kids about the dangers of venomous snakes.
The Papuan black is the most dangerous and deadly snake in PNG, common throughout southern PNG.
The main snake species are Papuan taipan, New Guinea death adders, New Guinea brown snake and Papuan blacksnake. They’re usually only active by day.
Most are seen moving around between early to late-morning, and then again during the mid to late-afternoon.
In a period of three days, from February 25-27, the centre treated four severe snakebite cases involving children between the ages of 2 and 7 years, all of which could easily have been fatal.
Parents are urged to encourage their kids to always tell an adult if they have seen or had an encounter with a snake.
For very young children, parents must keep a close eye on them, especially outdoors and near gardens or bush paths.
Buy them gumboots to wear and insist that they wear them in places where an encounter with a snake is possible.
Parents are warned not to ignore a suspected snakebite.
Papuan taipan is a large, fast-moving snake that is typically greyish, dark brown to black above with a broad orange-red dorso-vertebral stripe that extends along most of the back.
It adapts well to areas of human activity and often lives in village gardens.
New Guinea death adders live in wet environments common in monsoonal forests, lowland swamps and rainforests where it lives in ground debris.
New Guinea brown snake is a slender, very fast-moving snake that may be from tan to dark brown in colour dorsally with a cream to yellow belly.
It favors kunai grasslands and savanna woodlands.
The Papuan black snake is a typically gunmetal black both on the back and belly surfaces.
The tip of the nose and the throat may be cream to yellow in colour.
It lives in coastal swamps and marshland, monsoonal forests, bamboo thickets and occasionally savannah woodland.