First survey to collect data on snakebites in country

The Indian Council of Medical Research has launched the country's maiden survey to find out incidence, mortality and morbidity due to snakebites, which is estimated to kill nearly 50,000 Indians each year.

Despite India having the world's highest snakebite occurrences – an estimated two million out of a global figure of 4.5-5.4 million bites annually – there is no authentic data to design policy interventions like better availability of the anti-venom serum in health centres.

Since reliable epidemiological and socio-economic data on snakebites is essential to regulate anti-venoms and their distribution policies, ICMR formed a task force with researchers from Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi and Himachal Pradesh Health department to launch the community surveillance project in April.

Over 18 months, frontline health workers (ASHA) will collect snakebite data from 31 districts in 13 states representing all types of geographies – from marshy land to desert – to create the baseline data. The survey will continue till October, 2023.

"It will generate real time data on snakebite incidence, mortality, morbidity and socio-economic burden of snakebites for the first time. This has major policy implications. Currently, most of the snakebite incidents in rural India are not reported to hospitals," Omesh Bharti, a doctor working in Himachal Pradesh health department and one of the principal co-investigators, told DH.

Health workers, who serve a population of 1,000 individuals, will report each incident of snakebite in their community to a district-level coordinator, who in turn will coordinate with the ASHA worker to elicit more information through a formal survey.

The exercise would be carried out in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Tripura. The data will come from 336 taluks with a cumulative population of 8.4 crore.

The primary outcomes of the study would be to find out the incidence of snakebites in respective geographical areas, incidence of deaths due to snakebites and the socio-economic burden of snakebite while the secondary outcome would be to estimate the extent of morbidity due to snakebite in India, the researchers reported in the journal PLOS One.

Currently India’s snakebite death statistics come from an estimate made by the famed Million Death Study (46,900 per year), which is considerably high compared to 10-12 such deaths in the USA and Australia, both having many venomous snake species. There are also a few small scale studies from West Bengal, Bihar and southern states, but none represent a true national picture.