THOUGH astonishing, it’s a fact that snakebite causes over 6,000 deaths every year in Bangladesh. Not only that, some 7,00,000 people get bitten by snakes annually. It was disclosed by Health Minister on Thursday at a seminar organized jointly by the Directorate General of Health Services and World Health Organization in Dhaka. The Minister said that government was working to make venom vaccine available at Upazila level hospitals all over the country to reduce deaths from snakebite. “We have undertaken an initiative to make the antivenom available at District level. But we will have to take this to Upazila-level because snakebite is more frequent there,” he said.
What’s significant is that the available data over snakebite in Bangladesh is old. That means the number of death per year is more than 6000. One of the prime reasons for increasing death-rate is — snakebite is widely “neglected” because of lack of knowledge among people. Though the government has targeted to reduce snakebite deaths by half within 2030, it seems achieving target would be tougher within stipulated time due to lack of primary treatment and providing the patients with the life-saving vaccine.
According to a latest research conducted by Professor Janaka de Silver of University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka, poisonous snakes kill more than 90,000 people a year around the world. Of them, 11,000 die in India annually and in Southern Asia, venomous snakes such as cobras and vipers on an average kill 14,000 people each year. One thing is clear that, increasing snakebite death is a problem for many countries. In our country, the extent of problem is comparatively higher. Apart from lack of scientific treatment facilities, a large number of people still believe in exorcists who try to cure a snakebite patient by uttering charms and incantations.
Killing the poisonous snakes is not the best way to make people safe from snakebite death. Rather, it will create an adverse impact in the nature. We must say, government should take a programme to supply enough antivenom vaccines to all hospitals and clinics round the year. Side by side, it also will have to create awareness among the general people about the issue.
