Snake Bite Management, Research Toxicology Training Center
THE SNAKEBITE PROBLEM- A ‘DISEASE’ OF POVERTY
Snakebite affects the lives of around 4.5 million people worldwide every year; seriously injuring 2.7
million men, women and children, and claiming some 125,000 lives. Globally the greatest burden is
experienced in the tropical world; where many nations remain under developed or suffer from poor
governance, political and/or social, conflict, resource scarcity, high disease burdens, or food insecurity. The
available evidence shows that it is in the world’s poorest economies that the burden of snakebite mortality
is the greatest, and survival is no guarantee of a full recovery, with many thousands of victims being left
permanently disabled and emotionally destroyed by their injuries.
No | Disease. | Incidence | Deaths |
1 | Snakebite envenoming | 2682000 | 100000 |
2 | Chaga’s disease | 217000 | 14000 |
3 | Cholera | 178000 | 4000 |
4 | Dengue Hemorrhagic fever | 73000 | 19000 |
5 | Leishmaniasis | 1691000 | 51000 |
6 | Japanese encephalitis | 44000 | 14000 |
7 | Schistosomiasis | 5733000 | 15000 |
8 | Yellow fever | 2100 | 100 |
The World Health Organization added snakebite to the list of Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2009,
but made no provision to seek global funding to do anything about the problem. Like all endeavors, global
health is highly politicized, and it wasn’t long before snakebite was downgraded by WHO under a subdefinition:
“Other ‘neglected’ conditions“. This belies the extent of the problem – snakebite is a global
catastrophe affecting millions of the world’s poorest, and least empowered people. A 1998 WHO analysis of
global snakebite envenoming incidence and mortality provided figures that can be used to place snakebite
in comparison to other tropical illnesses:
Part of the explanation for why snakebite towers over many of these other diseases in terms of
numbers, perhaps lies in the fact that of all of the other neglected tropical diseases shown have been
subject to substantial control programs by the international community, while snakebite remains largely
unfunded and ignored among global public health priorities. The Global Snakebite Initiative was born out
of the desire by a group of international snakebite researchers to shift attention from simply reporting the
problems, to actively do something to solve them.