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Over the last two decades more than a million Indians reported that they had been bitten by snakes on average every year. Nearly 60,000 of them died annually.
The numbers seem enormous. But the toll could be significantly reduced with appropriate grassroots interventions and policy reforms.
The key for framing effective policy, it is clear, is robust data and proper analysis. This helps determine what interventions are needed, where they must be made and with whom.
Karnataka is well-poised to serve as a model for India’s snakebite prevention and management initiatives. In February 2024, Karnataka’s Department of Health and Family Welfare declared snakebite a notifiable disease – a first in the country.
Notifying it under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 2020, means that any healthcare facility, government or private, must mandatorily report a snakebite incident on the Integrated Health Information Platform. This ensures that information is pooled in one central location.
Anecdotal references, opinions and personal experiences tend to drive decisions in the absence of data. In the case of snakebite, that can be the difference between complete recovery or a lifetime of struggle or loss of life.
The Karnataka government’s action is part of a coordinated effort that includes initiatives to identify and notify snakebite treatment facilities statewide, ensure doctor training at the grassroots, reinforce the National Health Mission’s snakebite treatment protocols and launch information, education and communication material on prevention and management for communities that are at risk.
The impact of this policy decision is clear in the numbers alone. In 2023, just over 6,000 cases were reported across the state. In 2024, this figure rose to over 14,000. This does not mean that incidents of snakebite have increased – just that more cases are now being reported.
These figures will help understand which regions bear the highest burden and how different groups are affected. They also give policy makers critical data about what time of the day bites occur the most, which parts of the body are vulnerable, whether there is a lag between the bite occurring and hospital admission, and more.
This could hold the key to developing strategies for prevention and better bite management practices.
Unfortunately, some media reports have portrayed the rise in reported figures as an increase in snakebite. Not only is this inaccurate, it fosters fear in communities that are already vulnerable to snakebites.
As a consequence, snakes are killed indiscriminately out of fear or are relocated to alien habitats where they suffer the same fate.
Karnataka offers a model for national action not just because of the initiatives undertaken by its department of health and family welfare, but also the state forest department.
The forest department has enabled research that has shaped the scientific understanding of studies on geographical venom variation (the venom of snakes, even within the same species, across regions) that have led to an evolved understanding of the ecology of venomous snakes and helped establish a venom production unit. It has also trained officers about human-snake interaction.
At the heart of snakebite mitigation lies the need to preserve community tolerance for snakes. When snakebite deaths and disabilities are reduced, so is the fear-driven retaliation against snakes. Governments, the media and researchers must work together to advance and sustain this balance.
Sumanth Bindumadhav is the director of wildlife department at Humane World for Animals India (formerly Humane Society International India).
Gerry Martin is a renowned herpetologist and founder trustee of The Liana Trust.
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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