Question 250
HardOriginal questionEvery 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 , 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 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 that can stop a person breathing. Others stop the blood from , 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 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.
What is the writer's main purpose?
Show the answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The passage gives the size of the problem and who suffers, then names an effective treatment and the WHO's target to halve deaths.
Worth noting
It calls antivenom "the most effective treatment", so it does not argue against it.
- Concept
- Identifying the purpose of a factual passage
- Typical timeTypical
- 50 s
- Your timeYours
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