At an international level, snakebite has long been ignored. While the crisis gained some attention with addition to the World Health Organization’s Neglected Tropical Diseases list in 2018, fatality numbers remain high: 138,000 lives lost each year, with many more people experiencing life-changing injuries. And factors such as increasing conflicts and climate change are likely to exacerbate human-snake confrontations, leading to a higher incidence of snakebites globally; victims are typically individuals who live in rural areas with poor access to healthcare facilities, and/or with no access to anti-venom medicines.
As part of International Snakebite Awareness Day today, the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH)–which has been publishing snakebite research since 1947–released interviews with their Early Career Grant awardees in Ethiopia, Ghana, Phillipines, Kenya, Nigeria, India, Nepal about why they chose to conduct research into snakebite.