Up to 1.2 million snakebite envenomings and 140,000 deaths occur each year, but data is remarkably scarce on the location of the most vulnerable populations and what venomous snakes live where.
May 25, 2018
The World Health Assembly passed a resolution on snakebites last night, The Week reported, which advocates hope will improve research and access to antivenoms by the poor areas affected most deeply.
January 22, 2018
What makes snakebites—which permanently disable hundreds of thousands and kill 100,000-plus people annually—especially tragic? Highly effective antivenom treatments exist, just not for everyone.People in sub-Saharan Africa, where snakebites kill 20,000 every year, suffer…
November 8, 2017
A deadly shortage of antivenom drugs in Nigeria has left 250 dead from snakebites in the last 3 weeks, prompting health workers to call for a tighter supply chain. The last supplies of Echitab Plus ICP polyvalent and Echitab G monovalent arrived in August. The crisis is…
September 25, 2017
Several antivenoms used to help people recover from the bites of saw-scaled vipers—a group of incredibly lethal snakes commonly found in Africa, the Middle East and Asia—don’t work well enough, according to an Australian study.Snakebite antidotes contain toxins from…
March 23, 2017
Worldwide, snakebites kill 100,000 people a year and maim or cripple 400,000, mostly in India, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Now, chemists at University of California, Irvine, have created a snake venom–neutralizing compound that could be developed into a universal…
August 31, 2016
With depleting global anti-venom stocks, snakebites pose a crisis for many poor countries. In Nigeria, for example, rainy season floods stirred venomous carpet vipers to bite farmers too poor to buy protective boots. Hundreds of Nigerians die from snakebite each year. And…
June 27, 2016
By the end of June, the most effective African anti-venom, deemed unprofitable, is set to run out. Drugmaker Sanofi-Pasteur has ceased production, citing the commercial disadvantages of the treatment—time-consuming to produce and expensive, at a cost of about $500 for…
June 9, 2016
Snakebites are a problem in sub-Saharan Africa, where rural farmers, children and women are at higher risk and access to modern treatment is limited. The Numbers