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Fuck those savages.

In the late 1970s, a 50-year-old farmer was working in his
fields in the Hausa region of west Africa when was he was bitten
on the ankle by a snake, probably a carpet viper. Within two
hours his leg was badly swollen. The unnamed man, whose case is
included in a report by a group of doctors led by Oxford
University tropical medicine specialist David Warrell took
herbal medicine but continued to sicken. Six days later he was
taken to hospital, where doctors found that his urine was
bloodstained and he had suffered intense internal haemorrhages.
A day later, he died.

The farmer’s fate was grim, if not uncommon at the time, but
now, decades later, deaths from snakebites are still on the
rise. Recent evidence shows that hundreds of thousands of
individuals are dying every year as a result of encounters with
cobras, vipers or kraits.

It is estimated that a resurgence of the scourge of snakebites
in Africa and Asia could soon account for a quarter of million
deaths every year. In the past, deaths from snakebites have been
poorly reported and the extent of the crisis underestimated.
However, doctors in India recently carried out a detailed survey
and discovered that around 46,000 people in the country died
from snakebites every year. Official statistics had suggested
that the figure was only around 1,000. Similarly in Bangladesh,
a detailed survey revealed that the annual snakebite death toll
there was around 6,000.

“These two sets of figures are significant, for they suggest the
estimate made by a World Health Organisation-sponsored study
that snakes kill around 100,000 people a year across the globe
may be a serious underestimate,” said Warrell. “After all, we
now know that more than 50,000 men, women and children are dying
in India and Bangladesh from snakebites each year – and that
figure is coming from just two nations. We also know that
countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo have enormous
numbers of venomous snakes but provide no reliable data of any
kind about snakebite deaths within their borders. So I would say
it is more likely that 200,000 or possibly more deaths a year
are caused by snakes across the globe.”

In developing countries struggling to cope with HIV, malaria,
tuberculosis and other diseases, the problem posed by growing
numbers of bites by venomous snakes – examples include the
carpet viper and the spectacled cobra – is particularly
unwelcome.

“The trouble is that many nations have no real knowledge of how
bad the problem is within their borders,” added Warrell. This
point is backed by the United Nations, which has described
snakebites as “a neglected threat to public health”.

It is not just the death rate from snakebites that is raising
concerns. As Warrell also pointed out, many people survive bites
from snakes, but often at a terrible price. “Victims, who are
often agricultural workers, lose legs or arms or fingers and can
no longer hold down their jobs. Children’s limbs become
gangrenous after being bitten by snakes and have to be
amputated. They are blighted for life as a result. Girls have
their marriage prospects ruined. The price of surviving a
snakebite is often terrible.”

Lorenzo Savioli, a former director of the World Health
Organisation’s department for the control of neglected tropical
diseases, said: “Snakebites cause severe disability, bring
misery to families and kill thousands of people. We need to act
effectively to control the problem.”

Dealing with snakebites is likely to grow harder in the next few
years, because existing stocks of the important antivenom Fav-
Afrique, made by UK-based Sanofi Pasteur , will expire next
June. The company stopped producing the antivenom last year. “We
are now facing a real crisis,” said Gabriel Alcoba, snakebite
adviser to Doctors Without Borders.

Pharmaceuticals companies in South Africa, India, Mexico and
Costa Rica are working on replacement antivenoms, but these have
yet to be tested or marketed and may take years to be ready for
widespread use. “None of the possible successors to Fav-Afrique
have yet been adequately tested,” added Warrell.

Scientists say a handful of species are the main culprits for
soaring snakebite deaths in the developing world. These include
carpet vipers, spitting cobras and puff adders in Africa and
spectacled cobras, common kraits, Russell’s vipers and saw-
scaled vipers in India and south-east Asia. In most cases the
creatures kill by injecting a toxin that either causes serious
internal bleeding or paralysis. When they bite their natural
prey – rats or mice, for example – this kills them almost
instantly. Humans, being bigger, can take much longer to
succumb. But as veins and arteries leak, and serious internal
bleeding takes place, death can come within days.

However, these are not necessarily the world’s most venomous
snakes. The venom of the black mamba is more toxic than that of
the carpet viper, for example. But the former rarely comes into
contract within humans. By contrast, the carpet viper is often
found in fields and undergrowth.

“Farm workers stand on them or startle them and get bitten,”
said Warrell. “Obviously, antivenom is a crucial part of any
treatment. But just acknowledging the problem and its extent
would be a major breakthrough. Simple preventive measures could
then be introduced. Providing farm workers with boots would be
an enormous help, for example. They usually work in bare feet,
and that is where most get bitten.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/26/snakebites- kill-hundreds-of-thousands-worldwide

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