1/4/2024 0 Comments Blue indigo snake venom cancerAntivenoms are also “a technology that has seen limited innovation for 120 years,” says Andreas Laustsen, a biotech researcher and entrepreneur at the Technical University of Denmark in Kongens Lyngby. If a victim receives the right antivenom soon after a bite - within an hour or two - then the chances of survival are “very, very high,” says Nicholas Casewell, a biomedical scientist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in England.īut that “if” looms large, with big challenges remaining, including the difficulties of speedy access to care and the fact that most anti-venoms work against just a few of the hundreds of dangerous species of venomous snakes. That designation has led to an influx of funding for innovative research the largest, more than $100 million, came in 2019 from the Wellcome Trust.Įffective snakebite treatments do exist, and those antivenoms are considered the “gold standard” of care. In 2017, the WHO officially recognized snakebites as a neglected tropical disease. Venomous snakebites per year estimated worldwideīut snakebites are finally getting the attention they’ve long needed. Visit these places, he says, and “you will see how devastating the effect of snakebite is.” Victims are often the primary breadwinners of their households, so every death and disability contributes to the cycle of poverty. The worst effects occur in mostly poor, rural communities that depend on farming and herding. Snakebites are “a neglected disease that affects the neglected section of the society,” Iliyasu says. Between 80,000 and 138,000 victims die, and about three times that number have a life–changing disability. Add in India and other snakebite hot spots and the annual numbers rise to more than 2 million bites that need clinical treatment, according to the World Health Organization. Even in Australia - notorious for its deadly, venomous snakes - bites account for just a handful of annual deaths.īut in sub-Saharan Africa, about 270,000 people are bitten every year, resulting in more than 55,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, over 14,700 amputations and about 12,300 deaths, Iliyasu and colleagues estimated in Toxicon in March 2019. In the United States and Europe, cases are rare and hardly ever fatal. In the Western world, snakebites are a minor issue. “Most times, you see patients on the floor.” During the two annual peaks in snakebite cases - the spring planting and autumn harvest seasons - “we see like six, seven to 10 patients in a day, on average,” he says. Since then, Iliyasu, a specialist in infectious and tropical diseases, has tended to hundreds of snakebite victims at Kaltungo General Hospital, a health care hub for the surrounding Gombe State. “ was bleeding profusely.… From the nose. The man survived, but “it was quite severe,” Iliyasu recalls. When Nigerian physician Garba Iliyasu was 10, a venomous snake bit a family member.
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