Every second case of a fatal snake attack on a person occurs in India. At the same time, only 30% of victims of these attacks in rural areas get to doctors.
Almost half of all deaths in the world due to attacks by venomous snakes occur in India, but only 30% of victims of snake attacks seek medical help. These are the results of the work of the Indian Council of Medical Research, which studied some aspects of the interaction of snakes and humans in this tropical country. Snakebites kill more than 46,000 people in India every year and are probably the most forgotten tropical disease in the world.
Hospital data on hospitalizations due to snake bites and the use of drugs from the categories of antidotes are clearly underestimated, according to the authors of the study. A significant number of victims in rural India rely on alternative methods of treatment, that is, the same traditional medicine, and they do not get into national registries. The death rates of Indians from snake bites are colossal, especially when compared with the United States and Australia.
If 46,000 people die from snake bites in India every year, then in the USA – 10, and in Australia – 12. Of course, Australia is less populated, but there are many more poisonous snakes in it. The thing is that Indians, for some reason, practically do not go to hospitals, and most of the deaths occur, of course, just in the countryside.
