Who are most at risk of snakebite?

Every year about 5.4 million people around the world are bitten by snakes. In up to 2.7 million of these cases, the snake injects venom, and the result can be serious: between about 81,000 and 138,000 people die, and around three times as many are left with a permanent disability or lose a limb.

Snakebite is mostly a problem of Africa, Asia and Latin America, and it falls hardest where health care is weakest. Asia alone may have up to two million cases of envenoming a year. The people most at risk are farm workers in poor rural areas, who work in fields where snakes live. Children suffer more severe effects than adults, because the same amount of venom acts on a smaller body.

Venom can do several kinds of harm. Some venoms cause paralysis that can stop a person breathing. Others stop the blood from clotting, causing dangerous bleeding. Some damage the kidneys, and some destroy the flesh around the bite.

The most effective treatment is antivenom, a medicine that can prevent or reverse most of these effects. It is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines, and the WHO wants it to be available in basic health centres wherever snakebites happen. Its target is to halve the number of deaths and disabilities caused by snakebite by 2030.